Bands you keep trying to like but can't get into

that's pretty good advice!

my stock answer to this question is, and probably always will be:

Manic Street Preachers

I did try to search for a similar thread but without a unique keyword, nothing...

Tom Waits - I'm in that boat, too. This year, though, I made some progress with the 3 disc box he recently put out. The Orphans tracks, in particular, are really good. But not enough to make me own him.

The Fall took me years to go from hate to total and complete love, and I also started by getting into the poppier Beggars Banquet years, working backwards and then forwards again.

Sonic Youth also fall into this category for me, though I like alot of their work but I just don't love them and find their records inconsistent.

I don't like It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back at all, but the other Public Enemy stuff I've heard leads me to believe that I might still be able to get into one of their other albums.

"Sister Ray" and The Velvet Underground & Nico are so boring that I have no desire to listen to VU ever again. I remember one time when the stretch from "I'm Waiting For My Man" to "Heroin" sorta clicked with me and I 'got it', but the next time I listened to it it was gone again.

Three letters: G.B.V.

Joy Division & Pere Ubu. I understand their importance, but neither are any fun.

hey wait a damn minute. pere ubu are, at their best, a surreal experience.
secondly, the sounds that Allen Ravenstine produces are flat out kooky.
i wouldn't expect Dadaesque art to be "fun", but it can be entertaining as hell if you're in the right mood.

one of the most spine tingling solos i've ever heard is on the song "final solution" - not "feel good" stuff, but, like it or lump it, as powerful as anything ever recorded, imo

try a compilation of "the early years" and "the woonderfull and frightning world" which is like TNSG but with a better,cleaner,more accesible production.

On CD, Wonderful & Frightening World has always sounded really murky to my ears (though it is perhaps my favorite Fall album). If you're not averse to a career-spanning comp, I think 50,000 Fall Fans actually does pretty well.

I can't quite get into Van der Graaf Generator and am not sure why. It might be something about Peter Hammill's voice, sort of over the top or harsh. I like early Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, some Gentle Giant; being into the proggy stuff as well as later punk/post-punk, by which standards it seems like VDGG was more admirable than other prog, it seems like I should like them, but not much luck so far. He to the He I somewhat enjoy.

Three letters: G.B.V.

At their best, GBV create fantastic 3 minute pop songs that stick in your head. Unfortunately, most of their albums are chock-a-block full of song snippets and other failed experiments, making it hard to get to the nuggets. A friend of mine, a huge GBV fan, skimmed the top for me and culled out all their best stuff, and it's a joy to listen to. He recently lent me _Bee Thousand_ and I found listening to it a chore just to get to the good bits. So I can understand your feeling - find a friend who's a GBV fanatic and have 'em make you some compilations!

Spoon... such a goddamn impenetrable band.

Wilco - 'Summerteeth' to be specific.

On paper it should be so easy. But stick it on my stereo and my hand immediately reaches for the skip button.

Three letters: G.B.V.

Seconded. Bought three of their records before I finally admitted to myself that I just don't want to listen to half-completed demos of half-written songs.

I'm amazed that everything I was gonna submit has already been mentioned.. either we've all been lulled into quietly putting them into "the canon" without thinking, or we understand why they're vital yet it just misses the mark on a personal level.

My vote goes to the latter.. they're all pretty inventive.

So for me, again..
Public Enemy
Pere Ubu
G.B.V.
Husker Du
Bowie
XTC
Tom Waits

And I try three or four consecutive Animal Collective tracks at least once every two months. Never sparks anything.

The Fall took me years to go from hate to total and complete love..

Spoon, totally. Sometimes nice to hear on a jukebox, maybe on a soundtrack. Perfect incidental indie.

The Replacements

Yeah I finally clicked with The Fall about a year ago. No idea what happened there, it just made a great deal of sense one day. And this was after a couple years of trying to like them.

Pere Ubu and Tom Waits both way OTM, for me.

Broken Social Scene. Another Arcade Fire I'm afraid.

You know, I see a lot of bands being named here that I completely love (Hüsker Dü, The Replacements), but I totally understand how someone can be "eh" about 'em.

Spoon, the Arcade Fire, and the Fall. yeah, not an original bunch to pick, but those really ARE the ones that first pop into my head.

"Wilco - 'Summerteeth' to be specific.

On paper it should be so easy. But stick it on my stereo and my hand immediately reaches for the skip button.

"

yeah,otm.but only about that particular record.

pere ubu is hard to get into,and i can't say i'm always in the mood,but if i am - they are great experience.

plus, i can't get a alot of the progressive 70's stuff that is now quite trendy,maybe cause i grew up on 3 minutes songs,it's too pretentious and ridicules to me sometimes.

oh,and though i love "Can",some of their suppose to be "classic" stuff is boring.

90% of all popular music released in the past five years

"90% of all popular music released in the past five years"

how old are you?

really, who tries with that stuff?

I'm 25 years old. I listen to the radio. I go to the clubs. I read the Rolling 2007 Best Singles Thread. I look at the Billboard Hot 100. I know what the kids like. I try to get into it, really I do, but most of it just doesn't sound all that good to me.

the beach boys.
i keep trying the various reissues that arrive on the doormat, but no.
still cant stand'em.

galaxie 500

People are "trying to like" the Arcade Fire? Seems to me that with them, what you hear the first time will be all you'll ever hear.

With the Arcade Fire - I like the idea, but everytime I hear them I feel like I am listening to my Mom's new-wave tapes, driving around in the streets of my 80's childhood. Am I wrong?

arcade fire suck ballz, your mom totally had better taste in new wave

arcade fire are pleasant and have some good songs. but the singer's overearnest and much of the stuff is pretty thin. there's probably really not much to "get" as far as they're concerned...

Cosigned on Husker Du

rolling stones
led zep
kinks
the who

most 60s british bands
i like a handful of each of their songs but by and large i just dont like them

Bowie & Pere Ubu - I recently got their box sets from the library (again). I like Bowie's singles and his Berlin period but I can leave the rest. Pere Ubu's early material (singles and first album) are very good as is half of the next couple of albums but I can't get past Dave Thomas's voice - much as folks say about The Fall. I think it'll click one day.

60s UK bands - I like all the singles but I never, ever have the desire to hear The Kinks, Who, etc. Frankly I prefer covers by my favorite artists - Robyn Hitchcock's Dylan covers made me appreciate him as a songwriter much more than proper Dylan albums.

Nuggets is a box I listen to every couple of years. I like much of it but don't love it the way some do. Messthetics is my Nuggets.

Pavement.

Flaming Lips.

zappa, my bloody valentine, genesis, dylan, talk talk, coltrane. respect what they're up to, like some of their stuff, appreciate their impact/influence/what i've learned from paying attention to the people into them, but still feel more obligated by the politics of taste, rather than compelled by how much they rule, to keep trying them out

animal collective. the only way I could really like them is if they did the exact same thing they do now, except they dismember and eat Mike Love (of the Beach Boys) on stage. 'cause they sound like the Beach Boys, if the BBs were, er, tuneless idiots or perhaps just vegetarians who can't cut it. I realize this is perhaps contrarian, but I've tried, like the thread title says.

Tom Waits, too. Tried, respect the dude in his film roles and he's a funny interview. But his music just makes me sleepy.

Stars. I want to like them. I have all their discs, and I love some of the elements to their music (the 80s influences, mostly), but there's something about them that prompts me to reach for the skip button a lot when they come up on the iPod.

Even though they have some absolutely ripper songs, i can see why some people like them but i just cannot absorb what music they are making. Public Enemy are an incredible band. What they did for music in 1988 was unbelievable but the Bomb Squad's production has aged terribly since the release of 'It takes a nation of millions to hold us back'. I still cannot handle the production including that of 'Fear of a Black Planet'.

Soz, the first band i'm talkin about is the White Stripes.

The Doors. I got "Waiting for the sun" and like the singles, and so on.

I think they are underrated if anything, but I can't really got into em.

Pavement seconded. I've tried so hard, because I hear people I respect gushing over them non-stop.
To a lesser extent, Sonic Youth for the same reason.

lots of the bands already mentioned, like pavement, the fall, tortoise, even aphex twin to quite a large extent

but the one i'm most dumbfounded by is lightning bolt. there's no WAY i can dislike this band, in theory, but their music doesn't really make me want to carry on listening :-/

Pavement
PJ Harvey
Hendrix
The Smiths (I like some of their material but most of it is just boring)
My Bloody Valentine
Underworld
Lots of heavy metal
The Orb

The White Stripes. Sorry, but I just cannot for the life of me stand more than a few songs.
I feel like I should love this band based on my musical/listening tastes, but I find them so boring.
Yes, Jack White is a recording machine and super cool, but yeah, I don't get the overall hype of this band. Ever.

New Order!

xp: Yeah, I got out a bunch of their albums from the library after listening to Jack White's episode of WTF this summer. He seems like a great guy, but the music is so plodding and generic to me.

Scott Walker, idgi

^co-sign. Never tried very hard, though.

me too. i find scott walker's shtick just repulsive. i find hinmtotally unbearable. he seems to take himself so bloody serious when he sings.

I happened to have played a gig with both Soul Coughing AND Low back in the day. I had no idea there was a connection between them until now. I thought Low was every bit a random choice for that bill as my own stupid band. That was the only time I knowingly hear Soul Coughing.

A working class A cunt

Oops wrong thread!

I'm shellshocked that you are trying to like Starmer but can't get into him!

lol

I like Soul Coughing! I have tickets to see them next week in fact. I'm sure some people will be mad at this comparison but I've always seen them as like a 90s version of Can, it's all about the interplay of the rhythm section and the weird keyboard shit, Doughty being as limited as he is as a songwriter I think actually helps them since it allows the band to do all sorts of interesting things. I get why people find them irritating though, Doughty can be pretty obnoxious and I think his voice is a non-starter for lots of people, amusingly I think Mike himself would agree with many of the reasons people don't like the band, for a while he was Soul Coughing's #1 hater, guess he got over it though

yeah, it's mostly the vocals for me, I think. Difficult to get past, though. Would probably check out an instrumental Soul Coughing album

yeah i hate Doughty’s vocals. i also can’t stand Lou Barlow’s voice, all my Sebadoh-loving friends think I am crazy but oh well.

It took me years to like Can, roughly 1986-2008, kept trying, especially in the Napster era. Loved PIL, The Fall, Neubauten and other indebted music so I didn’t understand why they couldn’t click. “Oh Yeah” unlocked them and now easily one of my most listened to artists. But I think the times changed and I spent the 2000s listening to contemporary electronic music for the first time and so I think that trained my ears to retroactively feel the timbres and non-rock aesthetics better.

I’d like to crack Low!

LCD Soundsystem evades me every time. Sleater-Kinney also. I am over familiar with the sudden urge to skip/ffwd when attempting to digest/understand something not nostalgic or immediately gripping.

Blue Eyed Devil cover is loverly, thanks for that. Never heard before.

Sunday: RR here too. Two in a row again. Lucky, as [Hidden text. Click to view]

I’d like to crack Low!

my recommendation is to start at ‘The Curtain Hots the Cast,’ then go backwards or forwards from there. that record gets at the depth of their sound palette.

obviously Curtain Hits the Cast, lol

I prefer post Damo CAN to the classic lineup. I just can’t take his vocals.

There's something so archaic about the thread question to me. At the time it was asked, it was pretty normal (at least for me) to feel that if I wasn't into a group or a rapper or whatever it could be that I had failed to understand the them, or wasn't cool enough or refined enough to enjoy them. But now it's like nobody has any patience. It seems much more likely that somebody who's not into a band would feel that band had failed THEM by just being shit. (Not sure which of these is a "better" mindset)

I dunno! I got a kid who's really into shoegaze, but MBV isn't clicking at all. They're no Slowdive or JAMC, but they keep trying to figure out the fuss.

i'm not a synaethete or anything, but some music sounds like black and white/monochrome to me, and so i get put off...? anyone else get that?

yes definitely, but this is usually a plus for me, if an artist can really "synthesize" things together in a way that drains all color, that's an achievement, conveying a real mood that i can get into. i like a lo of lofi electronic music, tho. but it seems like a lot of music i don't like just has no regard for this, it all sounds like a mish mash of bright and ugly colors that don't go together. idk this might all be bullshit.

I dunno! I got a kid who's really into shoegaze, but MBV isn't clicking at all. They're no Slowdive or JAMC, but they keep trying to figure out the fuss.

I will note that I have always enjoyed and played more JAMC and Slowdive than MBV. Slowdive especially. I like MBV well enough, but they’re
nowhere close to Slowdive in my pantheon.

I prefer post Damo CAN to the classic lineup. I just can’t take his vocals.

How do you feel about Malcolm?

One of the most remarkable things I've read recently was that Michael Karoli's father, who was in the Waffen-SS during WWII, dug Monster Movie.

I like Mooney!

It seems much more likely that somebody who's not into a band would feel that band had failed THEM by just being shit. (Not sure which of these is a "better" mindset)

To be fair, said mindset always been where I've been at, but I am simple. (I certainly can change my mind but I also figure at my age there's plenty of stuff I will never have the patience for given all the stuff I already do like and find interesting then and/or now.)