pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

Catatonia hit a bit of a sweet spot thanks to a lot of attention to any number of Welsh acts at the time while also serving up perfectly fine pop-rock of the time and place (yards better than the fucking Stereophonics, for instance). And it seems Matthews keeps on in a Lauren Laverne way via broadcasting, writing, etc, so why not?

Hmm. When it comes to Catatonia, I'd say their two most successful albums (International Velvet and Equally Cursed & Blessed) are riddled with filler, but you could probably make up a decent 45 minute playlist of the highlights - stuff like 'Game On', 'Bulimic Beats' etc. Their final album, Paper Scissors Stone is fucking excrement from front-to-back. However - their debut, Way Beyond Blue, is as good as it gets... Cerys' vocal mannerisms are relatively dialled in on that record, the production is mostly OTM, and I'd say it had the strongest material the band ever had - 'Sweet Catatonia', 'You've Got a Lot to Answer For' etc. The drummer from Super Furry Animals plays on a few tracks on the LP, too.

No Moloko, no credibility

'Mulder and Scully' was a better single than 'All Around The World'

tru

lol at talking about The Sound Of McAlmont & Butler as a thematically intended, wilfully conceived album, when it is literally a singles compilation consisting of: their two singles

a piss-take at the idea that taking lots of drugs could be fun in the first place.

sure, let's pretend this is a sentence in English

the band channel their youthful vim to spend the last five minutes of the album (“Sick Party”) violently throwing up

a hidden joke CD bonus track is not "the last five minutes of the album"

anyway this list is p boring, Shampoo is the only effort at canonbusting, Kenickie should have been top ten etc etc

http://gph.is/YZ8x34

https://media.giphy.com/media/11gC4odpiRKuha/giphy.gif

Fun fact about 1977 CD, if you scrubbed backwards from the start of "Lost In You" by holding down the << button on a CD player so that the time goes negative on track 1 you can hear the demo version (or different mix, not sure) of "Jack Names The Planets". My scratched CD used to randomly skip back to it. (Also the first CD I ever bought.)

Ash's album cover are fucking grotesque also.

*covers

This list is fucking stupid. No offence to anyone who contributed.

Apart from I@n C0hen.

I genuinely don't know how you can have a discussion about Britpop and not include Prodigy, Bjork, PJ Harvey, etc etc etc... It wasn't just white guys with greasy fringes and guitars at the time.

"Blur or Oasis? PULP" is a flourish straight outta 2002

Also Nick otm

p.s. different class is more overrated than any other britpop album

― an uptempo Pop/Hip Hop mentality (imago), Wednesday, 29 March 2017 13:02 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I quite like it but would still agree with this.

like, it's the worst of their last four records

I genuinely don't know how you can have a discussion about Britpop and not include Prodigy, Bjork, PJ Harvey, etc etc etc

if they'd done that the responses to it would've been half "this def'n is so all-encompassing as to be pointless" and half "don't insult [x] by lumping them in with this shit"

probably both with some justification

I don't get Hefner being on this list but am always glad to see them mentioned. The Fidelity Wars and Boxing Hefner are brilliant. Interesting that Pitchfork make a Violent Femmes comparison -- I can kinda hear it. They always reminded me of a cross between Pulp and The Buzzcocks. Great shit.

Well, "Britpop" didn't exist, so...

Different Class is neither overrated nor the worst of Pulp's last four albums. Load of bollocks.

fair dinkum

re Ash 1977 CD hidden track 0, it's this iirc:

https://www.discogs.com/Ash-Jack-Names-The-Planets/release/1201332

I can only assume there was some arbitrary cutoff point? If not, the omission of the Libertines is inexcusable

It's always good to see New Wave get a shout on a list like this. As the years go by, it grows nearer to my heart...

The Libertines released their first album in the '00s, so I'd imagine it would be exempt from a list that focuses on UK guitar music from the '90s. I see that whole wave of UK guitar music: The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand, Arctic Monkeys, The Futureheads, Maximo Park etc. to be a different thing entirely, myself. Of course, that particular wave of UK guitar music suffered exactly the same fate as the '90s wave, with record companies so desperate to find the next Arctic Monkeys (in the '90s it was Oasis) that loads of really shit bands ended up getting signed and the phenomenon known as "landfill indie" happened.

Oh yeah, and Bloc Party.

by the time those dudes rolled around, you guys already went through POST BRITPOP (travis, feeder, embrace, coldplay...)

I thought Britpop had a pretty clear cutoff date.
https://juantadeo.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/august-21-bhn-oasis.png

by the time those dudes rolled around, you guys already went through POST BRITPOP (travis, feeder, embrace, coldplay...)

― a but (brimstead), Friday, March 31, 2017 12:37 AM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Meh. I see Travis, Feeder and Embrace as being at the tail end of '90s UK guitar music rather than as a completely separate thing. Feeder were more of an American-influenced alternative rock band when they first appeared and Travis' first LP was very much an electric guitar retro-rock fest - of course, after Radiohead and The Verve's Urban Hymns took off and became incredibly successful both of 'em ended up going down the "sensitive guys with acoustic guitars" route, Travis even going as far as getting in Nigel Godrich to produce for The Man Who. Embrace appeared after Travis and Feeder, and were pretty much part of the barrel scrapings of that particular era. I recall watching MTV with a friend circa '97 or '98 and the VJ started introducing the video to 'All You Good Good People' by talking up how Embrace were going to be the next big thing and their album was going to be the next Urban Hymns or The Bends, and then the song came on, which was basically this stodgy, stock chord progression with a singer foghorning tunelessly over the top and we were like "nah, fuck off, no way."

I don't see Coldplay, Muse and Doves as "'90s bands", really, I definitely see them as being "'00s bands" ...

am i the only person who still listens to the doves? i guess i never thought of them as britpop. they were cooler than that. i kinda feel that way about suede. i still love suede's two years of greatness and have never stopped playing the first two records and i would never think of blur or oasis when i think of them. though i realize they were lumped in there with all those other people.

although suede were definitely poster boys. doves never were. i don't even know what the doves look like. they were always more vague and gauzy.

okay, i just looked at pictures. doves do look kinda brit-poppy in old pics.

i didn't know about that black rivers album...do i need it though? probably not.

i love that embrace song! it builds in a pretty great way.

the brothers from the doves - before sub sub - were making 80's britpop. you ever hear that EP?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJVHohbWxSw

am i the only person who still listens to the doves?

― scott seward, Friday, March 31, 2017 1:16 AM (twenty-one minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I rate both Lost Souls and The Last Broadcast highly, particularly tracks like 'Break Me Gently', 'Sea Song' and 'Pounding' ...

Doves definitely weren't poster boys! God, no. Doves, Coldplay and Muse all released their first albums around the time that nu-metal temporarily gripped the UK for a couple of years - essentially while Radiohead were tucked away while working on Kid A, and UK guitar music had become Embrace and Travis etc. People were likely to have Matt Bellamy on their walls alongside Jonathan Davis, Chino Moreno and Serj Tankian, but Jimi Goodwin certainly wouldn't have had a look in. When the short-lived popularity of nu-metal started to taper off, that's when The Libertines and Franz Ferdinand appeared, followed by Bloc Party etc.

Lost Souls and the first Beta Band album go together in my head. listened to them a lot in 2000. and Our Aim Is To Satisfy Red Snapper! that was my turn of the century britpop...

and, of course, lawrence. my spirit animal. 17 years ago! that feels like a long time.

http://www.villagevoice.com/music/checkin-out-the-weather-chart-6417289

I still like the first two Doves records. The Cedar Room soundtracked a good chunk of the early 2000s for me.

Britpop was over once Oasis lost Bonehead and Guigsy.

I like those Doves records, too. I pulled out Some Cities not too long ago and was still pretty happy with it. They weren't bad live, either.

I didn't like Some Cities much. I didn't like the production, thought the songwriting wasn't up to snuff and got the feeling that the band had said all it needed to say on its first couple of records. I got off the bus at that point.

Anyway, as I was saying on the Boo Radleys thread, I've made my peace with quite fair bit of stuff from this '90s period of UK guitar music - there was quite a few years when I wasn't interested in at all and it was very much the last thing I wanted to listen to. My stance on the whole period is that "Britpop" is a useless word which doesn't actually mean anything and arguably it didn't even exist, and it's easier to look at that period as just a series of guitar bands... some which were good, some which weren't. Some of the music has aged well, and some hasn't. Yes, guitar music was popular to a degree, but a lot of other things were at the time. Yes, Oasis may have headlined Knebworth and were an incredibly popular band at the time, but when it comes down to it this period of guitar music was not really as popular as the likes of John Harris pretend it was. It was but one thing happening during a time when there were many things happening, and its "importance" has become unnecessarily overinflated. It does the best of the music made during that time and the artists that made that music no favours at all.

i just picked up a 2CD of doves last broadcast that had a bunch of electronic remixes on 2nd disc

Ach, my post here went to I donno where in the ether, but basically ach i donno. But Some Cities gets more play in this household purely by being in a differently shaped case (possibly a special edition), it is filed more accessibly than their other albums (which may be filed in the most convenient/unaccessible rn place: my mother's loft). All great tho. I had major positive comments regarding Kenickie and Shampoo and (even!)Hefner, but I ain't typing all that shit again, that is a nonsense list and anything I type in response is nonsense. Short version: St Etienne win whatever.

bb-era suede are fucking amazing, obviously

doves records sound great but don't really have great tunes.. they get too corn syrupy sometimes too.

and yeah saint etienne win everything

i love that embrace song! it builds in a pretty great way.

― maura, Thursday, March 30, 2017 6:27 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i really like the whole album.. i'm not sure why, the mix of tuneless oasis rips and dreary ballads seems like it would be the most boring thing ever but i feel it hard.

Post-Bernard Butler Suede are great too: sure, they went off the boil a little after Coming Up, but Bloodsports and Night Thoughts are both wonderful records, IMO.

yeah Night Thoughts (almost wrote Night Sports) was surprisingly excellent! tbh, it was probably your effusive posts in one of the suede threads that got me to check it out