Space Needle - The Moray Eels Eats The Space Needle

I've been watching Veronica Mars, and "Never Lonely Alone" turns up in one of the season two episodes, which is kind of weird as it's the kind of show that seems to use current (at the time) music but I don't think Space Needle were active anymore when the episode aired (like 2006ish).

I came across a copy of this for three bucks last night and bought it based on the cover art and a vague recollection of reading the name at some point way back when it came out. I got home too late last night to give it a listen yet, but I was pleased to see scott loved it!

Epic nineties psych sounds like a good idea right now

YES! One of my favorite 90s records.

I love that "Old Spice" got its title because they thought the vocals & vocal melody sounded like Phil Collins, which it totally does.

Man, "Old Spice" is a great song, lots of cool "Heroes"/Low Fripp-like action on it, and a really cool vocal (in my opinion). Used to put that on a lot of mixes.

Gotta dig this CD out of the box and get back into it.

Love Voyager, still haven't gotten around to this one besides a few songs.

I find Space Needle a little too all over the place. While the ground covered is covered well, would rather it have been a little more streamlined (too succeed as an album I can listen to straight through that is, which I almost never did). Really love about 5 of the songs on it though, well worthwhile (as is Voyager).

Wanna say that I really like the Reservoir stuff too, some great songs.

I think Voyager is pretty cohesive, but Moray seemed like it was much more varied based on what people have said/pieces of songs I've heard. Voyager has that really wistful yet not too melodramatic quality that I've come to love coming from music of that era. Though it is pretty melancholy, I think.

I saw them live at the Halifax Pop Explosion in 1995. Kinda made up for Elliott Smith not showing up. Love Left Us Strangers was mindbending!

Finally found a copy of this disc for a dollar in a used bin. I'm completely addicted to it. Both of these albums are incredible and deserve reissues and renewed interest.

"Old Spice", amongst many other of these songs, is still a jam. Just heard it again for the first time since posting on this thread hah hah.

great great band

I love both of their albums so much. One of my favorites for sure.

2nd album is really, really lovely

oh i'm up there saying so in early-me style

Does that lp reflect the Holy Modal Rounders psychedelic lp in any other way than the title? I'm assuming that's where they got the name from anyway. Heard that the original lp got its name from one of the 2 main Rounders having formed another band but returning to the Holy Modal Rounders name for commercial reasons or something to that effect.

not much to add except that I dig both proper albums a lot

check out Couloursound's You're Only As Good As Your Sound for more post-S3 art damage

"7 new answers" just got me excited that they had booked some shows or something.

Would love to be able to see that drummer in a live setting.

i just saw that all this stuff (space needle/ reservoir) is being re issued digitally next week
http://tractor-beam.com/jud-ehrbar-of-space-needle-reservoir/

LInernotes from the cd reissue of the Holy Modal Rounders lp they got the title from. looks like Stampfel put the Moray Eels together as a rock band after falling out with Weber
http://www.richieunterberger.com/moray.html

who cares, post about that on a holy modal rounders thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fa3QKnvuWcY

I def need to listen to this, don't I?

Well yeah

it's awesome. i still listen to it. great atmosphere. great atmosphere is underrated.

Amazing live band too. Caught 'em on the Moray Eels tour when they were a 3 piece (with a pre-bearded Anders Parker on 2nd guitar, who shreds btw)

You know, I like Yerself is Steam just fine for what it is, but this here is the album I always kind of wished it was instead

i still listen to this album. let's put it that way.

or i'm gonna put it that way anyway. you don't have to. i liked yerself is steam when it came out. but i don't own a copy anymore.

i still don't have a copy of the first space needle album. i just never see one.

Best album! Well, equal to their first in my opinion. They don't sound the slightest bit dated. There's a good chance I said that upthread somewhere.

Voyager > Moray Eels imo, but only by a little bit

I'd agree, actually. I'm definitely closer to Voyager. It's very haunting.

Naw this is def peak 1997. I can definitely see myself loving this for the next couple decades

(Yeah I just used both 'definitely' and the abbreviated 'def' both in the same post *sigh*)

Skot, they don't really sound like Space Needle, but just asking: do you like any ST37? Cuz they also have a couple of albums that are just the fucking best...

i don't. i'll look them up.

i've been listening to lenola's swerving corpse album a lot lately. from 1997. but that is more shoegaze + GBV. sorta.

listening to st37 now and it's hard to believe that they never played a show with my brother in the 90's.

Theyve been around for 39 years and last year was the first time they got a gig in Detroit, which blows my mind

*30

i've been listening to lenola's swerving corpse album a lot lately. from 1997. but that is more shoegaze + GBV. sorta.

― scott seward, Sunday, November 13, 2016 12:43 AM (thirteen hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I love that album! My Invisible Name is a fantastic record by them as well.

Yeah I'll check it out

i just noticed yesterday that the versions of the two albums on spotify are @2016 tractor beam (not zero hour) and have bonus tracks on them that i've never heard ... was there a reissue?

bonus track "sun doesn't love me" on moray eels is very nice though almost a flaming lips song

this funky remix of "love left us strangers" is pretty goofy

ack, i wouldn't want to hear remixes!

it sounds like the same song but with a 90s break beat and funky bass. not good but kind of funny

Those updates might be recent. If they aren't, then I'm surprised I didn't notice the bonus tracks until now.

Charles Aaron was/is almost certainly a fan of Zero Hour since "Sun Doesn't Love Me" (and a Varnaline single) were both in Spin's best of 1996 list, which is mostly crazy since it was impossible to find for years. I even had trouble finding it on Slsk until it showed up on "Recordings 1994-1997."

So now there's only a few songs Space Needle songs still absent from Spotify: "Sugar Mountain," "Cones and Rods," I'm probably forgetting 1 or 2 others.

this is one of those bands where i wish i was a billionaire and could start a niche reissue label that reissued albums with lavish packaging and dense documentation that would probably sell 60 copies total

love their commitment to having 2-3 perfect pop songs buried amongst 8-9 weirdo experiments on each album

"never lonely alone" off voyager is in my pantheon of all-time best songs

oh fuck i mean "before i lose my style" sorry i have a cold and my brain is not working. "never lonely alone" is amazing too obviously but the the lo-fi sound and extended feedback solo in "before i lose my style" are my shit

Love to see this thread bumped. It's an overused phrase, but I do think "criminally underrated" absolutely applies to them.

In other words, I would be one of your 60 customers for sure.

this is one of those bands where i wish i was a billionaire and could start a niche reissue label that reissued albums with lavish packaging and dense documentation that would probably sell 60 copies total

love their commitment to having 2-3 perfect pop songs buried amongst 8-9 weirdo experiments on each album

― na (NA), Wednesday, 29 November 2023 16:09 (fifty-six minutes ago) link

There is a label run by a very non-billionaire that does this for obscure album reissues without much scrutiny. Told me "I'll put out anything" so seems entirely passion-based. Focuses on indie pop / shoegaze though (https://www.daydreamrecordsofficial.com).

Anyway it's not totally out of the question to give it a shot in this current environment of ravenous physical music FOMO insanity. For myself I am happy to say I own every physical product they've ever released except the CD comp that came out in 2006.

that label looks really cool, some sarah records stuff

Yup small run elaborately colorful vinyl... a necessary recipe to drive sales for obscurities. Basically develops and releases whatever he can get his hands on though!

great great band

Agreed, it made me smile to see this thread revived! I was 14 and just starting to learn about space rock/ambient/drone, so this scratched an itch but also expanded my mind way beyond what I knew. And even just on CD, the Roger Dean artwork absolutely did the trick, it really made it feel like it was coming from another world...at least the epic pieces here did so.

I think at one point I had read it was going to just be the long pieces? (Am I making that up?) But the poppier stuff absolutely makes this a richer experience. I love that "Old Spice" is disintegrating shoegaze with cribbed Steely Dan lyrics (didn't know that at the time, of course) and yes, "Love Left Us Strangers" is pretty perfect...this is the kind of thing that at the time I think some reviewers thought was ironic--maybe understandable in the face of the artwork or some of the song titles, but pretty disarming on its own.

Truthfully, I haven't listened to this or Voyager in a long time, but they're both really special albums. Soft spot in my heart for the first Reservoir and Varnaline albums, too.

A deeply weird record.

I would pick up reissues of these. It took many years of waiting, but I finally found a store selling Moray Eels Eat The Space Needle on discogs for a price that wasn't outrageous. Their 7-inches are all still pretty inexpensive.

Yeah as a 90s underground indie vinyl collector there's a randomness to 7" demand amongst bands. Sometimes the price spikes on particular titles for various incidental "collectible" reasons, other times a mystery (usually just because some nut-job decided they'd pull the trigger on an opportunistic $30 price tag thereby validating the price even though other comparable titles remain cheap), but in general lots of 7"s from the era are still pretty dang affordable despite whatever higher price the LPs are fetching.