groups whose musical direction I can totally get behind, but whose style of vocals really puts me off

stunned at Tuomas' Ghostface antipathy too, specifically the assumption that everyone equally hears the same gratingness, rather than being "hey for some reason out of all the Wu MCs he just doesn't click for me *shrug*"

for me he's by far the standout Wu rapper, with more character and emotion and clarity and versatility to his voice than any other. but if people like Meth best for his charisma, or Rae for his half-involved, half-aloof sneering delivery, or Bobby for sounding most like a chew-safe rapper toy with a string in his back, I enjoy a prompt to pay attention to that rapper or characteristic next time I'm listening to a Clan recording.

yeah I loved Einar on the real too, he was just the Flavor Flav of the Sugarcubes

Ouch, guys. This really hurts.

fucked up
robert gilligan

love Hot Chip too, but the longer they go on, the more I wish they'd divide the vocals up a lot. (But: though Goddard and Grosvenor are both better singers with tones that suit the post-second-album stuff better, they don't have as distinct a character in their singing as Alexis does.)

A worse example of the same phenomenon is when Architecture In Helsinki went from being fragile, delicate indie to upbeat dance, and stopped having a bunch of vocalists divvying up parts and the main guy whispering reedily here and there, to main guy yelping like an aged cat with kidney stones in the middle and on top of everything all the time

Talk Talk

Ohhh, speaking of bands that split up the vocals: Rilo Kiley whenever Jenny Lewis isn't on mic.

Given that the Sugarcubes were the party band alter egos of Kukl, I think Einar was taking his cues from Fred Schneider. Who I have issues with, too.

excited to have my moment of being the one person to understand where tuomas is coming from. I like ghostface but he definitely has a shrillness to him

rappers are kind of an outlier in that their vocal style and delivery are linked, though? idk, I guess if ghost... ghosted for someone else, we could judge the lyrics independently of voice

I can get behind almost any voice if I like the music enough (see Cardiacs, Christian Vander, Ruins, metal in general tho I have learned to appreciate a lot of the vocals there). It's far more common that good voices are wasted on mediocre music.

Ruins!! I love Ruins

HEALTH is a good example of this. Love the music, can't stand the vocals. I still listen to them from time to time, but Death Magic would have possibly been my favorite album from last year if it were all instrumental.

practically every rock group from 90s onward

haha didnt even see tracer hand's post!

Oh, probably Cake, too, although I haven't listened to much of their stuff specifically because of that. Dude's. Halt-ing. Cay-dence.

Ahhh yeah, all-right, hoooooo

basically everybody who's come along wanting to sing mournful sad-guy indie in the years since will oldham picked up a microphone

i do like will oldham tho

The National
Fucked Up
Deafheaven
Radiohead
Xiu Xiu

There's a new band/new album (Omni - Deluxe) that had me thinking this exact thing yesterday. I love the album but don't really like the vocals and couldn't remember the last time I felt that way. Typically, good vocals are a requirement for enjoyment of music.

Hot Chip, AIH, "whisker vocal" bands -- agreed. Couldn't ever get into Will Oldham because I hate that style of singing. Feels so contrived. But other "contrived" vocals are fine (punk, metal, whatever) - just not the lonely sad wilderness whittling-in-a-union-suit fellas.

Most good metal bands.

― Three Word Username, Tuesday, July 19, 2016 4:53 AM (10 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^^otfm^^^^

also Radiohead, Deerhoof

Someone always has to mention Deerhoof. I don't think there's a more fitting vocalist for them really, I mean what's the alternative?

no vocals?

there really should be more instrumental rock bands. There are not nearly enough good singers and lyricists for all these bands.

The Smiths

"there really should be more instrumental rock bands."

the mention of Lambchop above. put on one of their CDs the other day and the music sounded great and then the singing started...

this is a lot of atmospheric indie bands for me. and yet i love Low, so, i dunno, it's just a preference thing.

Einsturzende Neubauten.

With HEALTH I took the vocals to be an exercise in contrast with the backing, much like early Cranes. The overall effect reminds me of some more propulsive Wire tracks with Colin Newman at the vocals.

I can't think of a single example of this

I guess RHCP are a bad band made fucking unforgivably abominable by their vocalist

I definitely get this a bit but I don't think I've had it that badly since late '90s/early '00s where there was a load of great electronic acts with awful vocals (I'm not talking about "indie-friendly electrodribble", this was a bit before that, and tbh I didn't hate all of that stuff).

(Although actually now I'm thinking about it I think it really depended on yr definition, there was a lot of that stuff that I did abhor.)

A.R. Kane - the vocals are so poor, I found the records unendurable.

everything go crazy now

I guess RHCP are a bad band made fucking unforgivably abominable by their vocalist

RHCP could be good if it wasn't for Kiedis. The guy is an absolute fucking nightmare. (Though, in counter to the quote that's always brought up as a joke at RHCP's expense, Nick Cave is a fucking awful singer, too, and I'd probably like the Bad Seeds a lot more if, say, Blixa had been the vocalist.)

http://imgur.com/a/wLInt

http://imgur.com/a/wLInt

Beastie Boys

I wouldn't say I can totally get behind their musical direction, but Gentle Giant.

rappers are kind of an outlier in that their vocal style and delivery are linked, though?

Wait what?

not sure where I was going with that, please disregard

It's probably not just his vocal style, but I realised the other day that the Chili Peppers would be a whole lot less punchable if they'd replaced Anthony Kiedis with someone who wasn't an extraordinarily untalented dickhead

New Order

saw them live recently, that guy's a poor singer

decent on record tho

i used to have this 80's new order live boot where he was just hilariously bad. it was funny. the vocals on the boot were way up front. sounded like the post-punk linda mccartney.

Talk Talk

― Iago Galdston, Tuesday, July 19, 2016

i like bobbie watson of comus, but boy she really wanders off pitch a lot.

the falsetto Whitney's lead vocalist does is for some reason v off putting to me

Neurosis
Bad Religion
Deerhoof

Hood

Also, I love Underworld but a solid 25% of their catalog are ruined by bad singing

no

this thread absolutely sucks you all are like those picky eaters who won’t eat anything slightly spicy or funky. or like, tomoatoes and peppers.

I can't think of a single example of this

― imago, Tuesday, July 19, 2016 6:30 PM (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm

There are many examples where I didn’t like the vox at first but they ended up growing on me, slowly: Bowie, Jagger and Bryan Ferry, most notably. I read so much about Roxy Music and finally found a copy of s/t and slapped it on and heard this bray of a bellow “I TRIED BUT I COULD NOT FI-I-IND A WAY” and I turned it off and didn’t listen to it for years. I love Bryan Ferry now.

But the one band that would likely be my favourite band ever except I just can’t with the singing: XTC

Without naming names, I feel like I have such experiences fairly often upon tuning into Wire or Quietus recommendations, etc. "This sounds incredible... oh wait, there are vocals?! These edgy quasi-slam poetry passages will surely get old within a few listens."

Several years ago one of the Wire’s albums of the year (that shall remain nameless) I could never get past the first couple minutes which consisted only of a narration with vocal fry backed by a couple desultory sound effects.

Jethro Tull I can't listen to largely because of Ian Anderson. Gentle Giant and King Crimson I have to grit my teeth when someone starts singing.

There are a lot of lesser known early 70s hard psych/blues rock groups who had awesome guitarists and barely tolerable vocalists.

Shearwater was great until opera man opened his mouth.

Sadly, many or even most sopranos in the folk tradition, especially those who enunciate very distinctly...

Hah, I love XTC but yeah, both the dudes' voices are... coriander (cilantro) in my otherwise delicious sandwich. Just have to accept it and learn to like it.

Andy Partridge's voice I get being an acquired taste, but Colin... always thought his voice was pretty easy to like

Morrissey took me a while to appreciate, maybe more because of his strange melodic style than his actual voice

A lot of growly death/black/etc. metal, tbh. It's the vocals that put me off from listening to a lot of the stuff as much as I'd like, since it's the music that connects with me the most. The irony/contradiction is that I can't imagine listening to most of this type of metal *without* the vocals, and can't really imagine any style of music *other* than the growls! Maybe that's why I like Opeth so much, since he shifts back and forth between singing and growling, and the music is diverse/dynamic enough to support that.

Morrissey is a gold standard - and this was way before all his racist stuff.

That feels bizarre to me. Morrisey’s voice is key to my enjoyment of the Smiths. Otherwise they’d just be another jangle band.

Can we do songs? Any song in the past few years with guest vocals by John Cale or Iggy Pop are almost album-ruining.

Cate Le Bon's "Ride" (with Cale) from her latest is great

I don't think about it much now, and enjoy a lot of Smiths and Morrissey songs, but in the early 90s when I first learned about Morrissey/The Smiths, it was a pretty common (but definitely not universal) opinion that his vocals were obnoxious. Maybe, as Vinnie suggested, due to his melodic choices, but there's also something about his voice. I'm not schooled in vocal technique or anything like that, but his timbre is a little nasal while also being soft and soothing. To be uncharitable, it could sound like someone in the midst of a reverie of smelling his own farts.

A lot of great singers have normie detractors. Thinking of Dylan in particular.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVTzT3FmxhI

I don't really get the Morrissey/ XTC dislike tbh. I mean I can understand it but it's not like they're Sleaford Mods (lol).

except in a few ways lol

My first exposure to The Smiths (beyond “How Soon Is Now?” on the radio) was a blind purchase of Hatful. The run of “Handsome Devil” into “Hand In Glove” into “Still Ill” had me not-getting it— Morrissey’s voice is lovely but his melodies, especially on those early singles, are so meandering, and the lyrics were so weird and strange and clunky.

“Heaven Knows…”, like, the melody just vacillates between three boring notes and then he’s switching to falsetto on the end of the phrase to go “kick in the eye” or “spit in the eye” (lazy writing!) and I was like… is this a joke?

And then after a while I got it… it is a joke! and it’s a funny joke. Realizing that Morrissey is more comedian than singer made it click.

A lot of growly death/black/etc. metal

Brings to mind perhaps the only instance I've spontaneously raised elsewhere on this site:

The first two tracks are downright catchy in their wonkiness. I feel like I'm eventually going to be a massive fan of Jute Gyte when I finally come to appreciate 'metal vocals' more broadly ― Nag! Nag! Nag!, Friday, 7 May 2021

And I now see it's not the first time the dude has come up in *this* thread. Bless.