BOB motherfucking DRAKE!!! Classic/Delicious?

how have i slept on this guy

OTM, although i know some Thinking plague tracks

damn, I have some catching up to do! the most recent release I've heard by this guy is The Shunned Country (on which the whimsical avant-folk sound byte format was starting to wear thin) so it's nice to hear he's branched out a bit stylistically. I wonder if he's ever cited The Residents as an influence — his solo work reminds me a lot of their Commercial Album in that they both come up with hooks that could easily sustain a 3.5 minute pop song, only to dash our expectations through obstinate lack of repetition. his work with Thinking Plague and 5uus is comparatively more focused, and he's obviously capable of sustaining an idea over a typical epick progge runtime when the approach suits him (or when he has enough collaborators to rein him in).

all this fervour is making me really want you all to join the cardiacs train. perhaps one day it can be so. bob drake seems like america's answer to them (well, he and 王若琳 ~~ JOANNA WANG ~~ 琳若王 )

i'll definitely track down thinking plague too

wait he was in 5uus also? Jeez, I think I might have known that in the 80's, but forgot.

bruh I'm pretty sure 99% of ilm has succumbed to the hype and listened to Sing to God exactly once from start to finish. but I'll give Joanna Wang a try, never heard of her til now.

Haven't thought about this guy for a long time. The Skull Mailbox is such an incredible album (needs a re-release). What's his later stuff like?

hmmm. what does bob drake sound like today? it's whiplash music, but not self-consciously "wacky" like a lot of bands do (indeed, there are moments here I find genuinely funny, which is pretty rare for me) or deliberately obnoxious like with naked city. he also gets there through traditional pop music means, though on a compressed timeframe - he does chord changes and stuff rather than just playing one riff and then moving on to a diametrically opposed riff.

despite the lovecraft, his aesthetic is not terror, but strangeness. it's alluring and repulsive in equal measure, or at least it is to me.

there's lots of production weirdness, but bob drake is a really fantastic producer (he does tons of records), so it complements the music very well. he's not just burying his songs in stupid gimmicks; the production is as essential to the sound as the songwriting is.

bruh I'm pretty sure 99% of ilm has succumbed to the hype and listened to Sing to God exactly once from start to finish.

― memories of a cruller (unregistered), Monday, December 5, 2016 9:03 PM (three days ago)

*twice

I suppose this is a fair indication of where he's at these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCX-xhFlSl4

you going tonight?

https://bdstudio.bandcamp.com/album/2-tracks-from-each-of-my-first-8-solo-albums-1994-2014

to catch anyone up since the hiatus he took after 'shunned country' and dleone stopped reviewing his things:

- 'bob's drive-in' was his first solo album after a few years off for collaborations -- production chops pared back simply to concentrate on an usually catchy set of songs. twist on this album is that you get it twice on the same disc -- once in studio versions, then again intact in slightly looser live versions, but oddly the goal of the live versions is to match the studio versions as closely as possible, production-wise. so you might not listen to this one all the way through, but it is a very interesting presentation

- 'lawn ornaments' - crazed production density comes back with a vengeance, every song is crammed with detail and the arrangements change every 1.5 bars -- but unlike 'shunned country', which had 52 songs in 40 minutes, this one actually has just enough repetition & riffs that they still actually operate as 'songs'. it is front-loaded with the catchiest stuff up front, but there are some real treasures hiding towards the end that I didn't catch the first few listens, as often happens with fast paced listens

& the new one is a follow-on from 'lawn ornaments' -- ridiculously dense, can't wait to play another three times before listening

the packaging for the last two are over the top. 36 pages each, individual two-panel color drawings for each song, by 'Joe Mruk', not buying it

New album!

https://bdstudio.bandcamp.com/album/planets-and-animals

Deliriously silly and amazing as ever. I bloody love this guy