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

I stopped doing this but for the longest time it was:

The Beach Boys
Talking Heads
Cocteau Twins
Hüsker Dü
The Fall
The Orb
Stereolab
The Kinks
Liz Phair
Public Enemy
The Blue Nile

I don't hate any of them per se (well, except perhaps for the Beach Boys, due to the amount of time I wasted on Pet Sounds) or I would have moved on immediately. So while none of these rivals the baffling awfulness of, say, Elvis Costello or the Afghan Whigs, I wouldn't mind not hearing them ever again for the most part.

stevie nicks

Valuable Passages has a lot of really good early songs, but also has some kind of misguided selections ('Piece For Out of Tune Grand Piano' and the spliced up 'Without Mercy' bits are pretty questionable).

I'd definitely say check out the Vini Reilly album from 1989. Valuable Passages stops right before that period. Tony Wilson's introduction of the Akai MPC sampler to him, along with Vini's unexpected collaboration with Morrissey around the same time, really inspired a new muse and got him out of the trajectory of diminishing returns he had been on for the previous little while.

I have a "thing" about the unfortunate-ness of Pet Sounds's standing as the "canonical" Beach Boys album...

xps felt is a band where nobody really agrees on what albums are best, except maybe for forever breathes the lonely word.

my introduction to them was the absolute classic masterpieces compilation, which highlights the earlier guitar-led work. this is the album i recommend to newcomers... but it has a few songs from ignite so maybe this sound isn't your thing.

in which case i recommend the subsequent bubblegum perfume compilation. this covers the post-deebank years, where the sound becomes more wide-ranging as keyboards become more central. this is the album that turned me into a felt obsessive.

if these compilations don't do it for you then i don't think anything on their albums is going to change that.

John Martyn

I have a "thing" about the unfortunate-ness of Pet Sounds's standing as the "canonical" Beach Boys album...

― i’m still stanning (morrisp), Wednesday, June 6, 2018 4:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it should be All Summer Long.

John Martyn

― Duke, Thursday, June 7, 2018 10:08 AM (thirty-one minutes ago)

Ahhh, that hurts my soul!

What have you tried?

pet sounds is fucking amazing

Pretty sure I could get into propagandhi if I tried a tad harder

listen to the instrumentals and it's blow your mind, you really hear how wild the song structures/chord changes are.

(re pet sounds)

You mean like the "Instrumental Stereo Mixes" on the 50th Anniversary Edition? OK, will listen to them now.

My feeling about the album as the "canonical" choice is that -- notwithstanding how great it may be -- if it had been my introduction to the BB, I may not have chosen to go further with them... so I wasn't surprised to hear someone saying something similar.

Tho I also got into them in a funky way, and I'm honestly not sure how I'd try to "get someone into them"...

As far as beach boys intros go smiley smile and wild honey combo deliver.

Nick Drake
Fleetwood Mac

xp - Yeah that was a big part of what did it for me!

bjork

Update to previous post in this thread.
I now have Beach Boys reissues of Pet Sounds, Sunflower and Surfin' USA, and no longer hate the band quite as much as I used to.
Still not that keen, and it takes a very certain mood, though Sunflower is easily by fave of the bunch.
New entry : Beck.
I have 3 charity shop purchases, (Midnite Vultures, Mutations, Odelay), and I have not been able to listen to any of them to the end before I just get bored/fed up.

Well, Beck is not a very compelling recording artist (IMO)

joy division

(I love New Order fwiw)

Also never got the big fuss over Spacemen 3

A.R. Kane, all the descriptions and articles on them make them sound like my dream band, but the reality is so prosaic. May give them another go now.

I always thought I should like Tindersticks but never made it through a whole album in one sitting

Tho I also got into them in a funky way, and I'm honestly not sure how I'd try to "get someone into them"...

I'm Morris P and I'm here to say /
I got into the Beach Boys in a funky way!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGJqL3BRDlo

Pet Sounds is a great record but it doesn't begin to scratch the surface of what a truly bizarre band they were, or the vast breadth of their catalog

LOL! xp

joy division

(I love New Order fwiw)

Also never got the big fuss over Spacemen 3

Even though I like Joy Division just fine, I am pretty surprised to find another person that also prefers New Order. High five!

(also don't know that I've ever heard anything from Spacemen 3 that lives up to some of the more hyperbolist writings on their music)

High five! I feel the same way about Joy Division. I mean, I get why they're important and all that, but I kinda feel like if you've heard one song you've heard 'em all (early / Warsaw stuff excepted)

And I have tried really hard with Spacemen 3, but nothing ever sticks. I like bands that have imitated their particular sound (Velvets meets Stooges meets, err, Terry Riley?), but I just find their records very dull and monotonous.

I would imagine there's more New Order fans than there are Joy Division fans?

I like the idea of Springsteen and I like the lyrics of Springsteen but do not actually enjoy Springsteen. Similarly I like the idea of Prince and the undeniable talent/genius of Prince but rarely enjoy actually listening to Prince.

Acid Mothers Temple
American Music Club
definitely Spacemen 3

S3 falls into the category of Sounds Like Your Ideal Band on Paper .. but just doesn't happen on vinyl

Acid Mothers live = classic
Acid Mothers albums = dud

AMT doesn't help out potential fans with the sheer amount of stuff they put out.

exactly how i feel about Prince xposts

Most of these have at least one or two songs I can still get with but

The Stooges
Franz Ferdinand
Echo and the Bunnymen
The Teardrop Explodes
Suicide
Television
The Pop Group
Pavement
Scritti Politti

I just went through an Uncut list and it well and truly delivered

I like the idea of Springsteen and I like the lyrics of Springsteen but do not actually enjoy Springsteen.

"Born in the U.S.A." was a big album for me as a kid -- I used to drive around with my dad in his pickup truck, listening to the tape and reading the lyric sheet over & over (...which I guess is a very "Springsteen-ian" image). "Tunnel of Love" got a fair amount of follow-up play, too. I think of both albums fondly -- especially "Born...," which I can essentially play in my head, song for song -- but I never play them, and have never really been able to get into his other stuff (while of course I acknowledge his "greatness" as an artist, etc.).

xp lol one of those bands is not like the others

seconding Franz Ferdinand
Tupac
Father John Misty
Iceage
King Krule
Tyler The Creator
Arca
Solange
Anderson Paak
Car Seat Headrest

the Rolling Stones
New Order
Elvis Costello
Nick Cave
The Cure

oh, also almost all of the dubby neo-soul that all the teens seem to love nowadays—i can't wrap my head around that stuff at ALL

Yeah - that's a perfect example of something I want to like, but can't get into.

(assuming we're talking about the same thing; now I'm not so sure...)

what're the examples you're thinking of? i was thinking like xavier omar, kyle dion, all the stuff that feels like jai paul by way of soulection. the zero fatigue crew (smino, ravyn lenae, monte booker) are one of the exceptions

ok yeah, you're more plugged in than me, haha... I haven't even heard of that stuff (I was thinking of more mainstream neo-soul/R&B, I guess).

just checked out Omar and Dion, and... yeah

i'm just on the cusp of the youth (just graduated college) so i still see what people right below me are into. i got into music during the peak blog-indie era, and now it feels like all the cool teens who would've liked that stuff have a pantheon of sza and frank ocean that all this stuff sits right below

when it's good it's basically the above mentioned zero fatigue people and like....noname (chicago artists seem like they're able to make something good out of the sound). oh and kaytranada

bjork

― flappy bird, Thursday, June 7, 2018 11:03 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

After years of not being able to get into Bjork, Homogenic and Vespertine ― especially Vespertine ― suddenly clicked very hard for me in the past month. It can happen!

Pet sounds is good but can’t say I’ve been compelled to put it on since I was 16

Pet Sounds sounds phoney, for lack of a better word. Pleasantville without the irony. The faux-innocence, the hokey lyrics, the retchingly cloying melodies (the further it veers towards the major key the worse), the overwhelmingly American sense of misplaced, self-deceptive optimism – I just can't do it, few things are as off-putting to me on a visceral level. And all of it drowns out Brian Wilson's formal accomplishments, which are very real. 'God Only Knows' is classic, though.

For me it’s partly just that we played “Sloop John B” in middle-school band, which forever ruined it for me.