pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

i hope jai's coos were in e

Blur was caustic?

I'm listening to "Beetlebum" right now and man I just feel the flesh being flayed from my face

i remember the legendary Blur/Cows/Flying Luttenbachers tour, crazy shit

The back cover and inside sleeve by Paul Postle depict sulphur fields in Iceland, where much of the album was recorded

The music press predicted that the lo-fi sonic experimentation would alienate Blur's fan-base. These fears were also shared by James who revealed that the front rows of the gigs that the band were performing at during the Britpop years were primarily attracting 15-year-old girls and that he thought the change in style was a "fucking big balls move."[

--

this was a very funny time

recalling interludes from the classic Public Enemy records, where speeches from social reformers like Frederick Douglass were fused with steely breaks.

uh

lol

Who wrote that, Trump?

Yeah, a lot was made in the UK music press in 1997 about Blur taking a left turn on their self-titled album, and Pavement were mentioned a hell of a lot in Blur interviews/articles during that period. The hilarious thing was - and this was also publicised at the time - that Albarn invited Malkmus around to his home to hear the album, and Malkmus couldn't hear much Pavement influence on the album beyond the repeating guitar lick at the end of 'Beetlebum' ...

At this point it's easy to look back on Blur and wonder what the fuss was all about regarding their change in sound, particularly after all the material they've put out since both individually and collectively, but at the time people were genuinely surprised and in some cases alienated by the record.

yet it turned out to be their American breakthrough and, according to Albarn, their biggest worldwide hit

I remember my reaction to "Song 2" at the time was "I guess Blur decided to make some non-terrible music"

(I hadn't heard "This Is A Low" at the time)

song 2 is blur's only good song, pavement have no good songs

I said "Pavement is Weezer for people who think they don't like Weezer" on Twitter a few weeks ago and a bunch of people got very upset with me

The Blue Album > Anything by Pavement

I guess that's less controversial

Blur didn't just turn out to be their American breakthrough, it turned out to be their biggest selling album worldwide to date. 'Beetlebum' was a UK #1 single (although to be fair, such was Blur's real world popularity - even though the music press at the time kept saying they were on the slide - that its #1 spot was inevitable), 'Song 2' nearly was and 'On Your Own' didn't perform badly either.

I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when I heard the Blur album in full for the first time in 1997, having only heard 'Beetlebum' prior and knowing what the lyrics to 'Essex Dogs' were they'd been publicised prior to the album being released, and I remember my first impressions of pretty much every track. To be quite honest, I didn't find the album inaccessible at all, even with stuff like 'Essex Dogs' on there, but it did alienate some. I actually recall a magazine article that captured various people's first listen reactions.

One has to remember that during the period when Blur were actually full-on bona fide pop stars in the UK circa 1994-1996, and even slightly before, their pre-'Popscene' work was seen as being mostly being not particularly very good outside of a few tracks (e.g. 'Sing', 'There's No Other Way'), and it was felt by some that the approach to Blur was partly a revisiting of the chaos of their earlier work, and the feeling by some was "why the hell would they want to do that?" ... and if the self-titled album didn't scare those people off, then 13 certainly did.

I said "Pavement is Weezer for people who think they don't like Weezer" on Twitter a few weeks ago and a bunch of people got very upset with me

the first time I heard of Weezer was when my friend went to their show because she was a huge Shonen Knife fan and they were the openers. She said she walked out on Weezer because they sounded like MTV's version of Pavement.

I said "Pavement is Weezer for people who think they don't like Weezer" on Twitter a few weeks ago and a bunch of people got very upset with me

I assume it was said to “get a reaction,” as it makes no sense otherwise

For all the critical kudos that those first two Weezer albums still get, and even though they still have an astoundingly rabid fanbase that'll devour anything they release even if their reaction more often than not tends to be "wahhh, this isn't the debut/Pinkerton", I found them astoundingly easy to ignore in the UK in the '90s.

Aside from a handful of appearances of 'Buddy Holly' on MTV and some mild controversy surrounding Pinkerton (apparently some company sued the band over the name of the album), I don't remember much else about them, apart from that I felt - at the time - that perhaps they were some kind of novelty act. When they returned with their second self-titled album, they seemed far more prominent and it was only then I checked out the first two albums and found that both were actually quite good.

Pavement, on the other hand, were getting cool points from critics in the UK music press throughout the '90s. They were harder to avoid.

I don't understand that either.

xpost

I get it

but I love disliking Weezer -- hating them makes me feel like a right wing relative poking fun on Twitter at snowflakes

There's one song on Brighten The Corners that sounds like Weezer I guess

Anyone who's protesting too much is just proving his point

We’ve done this before guys when DJP said there was no difference between the Replacements and the Gin Blossoms or something like that

also correctly (they are both bad)

I said "Pavement is Weezer for people who think they don't like Weezer" on Twitter a few weeks ago and a bunch of people got very upset with me. People said they were going to call up and tell us we're terrible people and that it's not that bad of a thing."

Weezer got in touch a few days later and offered his own, totally unflinching apology for those people being rude to him by tweeting "Sorry, this post was meant for Weezer's fans and not for your ignorant twat".

I have said many outlandish things in the past but I am reasonably certain I never equated The Replacements with The Gin Blossoms.

*unfollows*

aw

also hi-five Whiney

the Weez have such a weird career arc, I can't think of another band that managed so much prolonged success despite the fact that nearly everything they do is mostly known for being "nowhere near as good as the first 2 albums"

DJP's tweet is painfully otm

Not as successful but... The Strokes? Interpol? The Shins?

the Weez have such a weird career arc, I can't think of another band that managed so much prolonged success despite the fact that nearly everything they do is mostly known for being "nowhere near as good as the first 2 albums"

― frogbs, Monday, June 3, 2019 5:12 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This describes most bands from the 90s who are still kicking...

I dunno, Weezer seem to be unique in the sense that whenever they release new material - and it's been this way for many years now with the exception of one or two albums - it gets received with outright hostility rather than indifference. Yet their fans still stick with 'em!

https://i.redd.it/parbbxw9ubf01.png

https://i.redd.it/nj7vcgn1a9s21.png

Hah! I remember Raditude particularly getting some of the most hostile reviews from critics and a horrible reception from fans. I actually thought, at the time, that that would be the record which killed them off. But here we are 10 years on and a further 6 albums later...

🖼

Weezer definitely didn't start out as a novelty act but have obviously become one. The question is when-

Beverly Hills

They were always a novelty act. Buddy Holly is novelty indie rock.

Island in the Sun

Although the second self-titled record and Maladroit were both slagged to fuck by fans at the time simply because neither were Pinkerton, I still enjoy the best of the material from that period - 'Island in the Sun', 'Slob' etc.

For me, the turning point was Make Believe and 'Beverly Hills', which didn't feel endearingly stupid, just stupid. From there, you go to songs about "being a troublemaker" and "tipping cows for fun, yeah", but actually he didn't do that because he "didn't want the cow to be sad", how much he can't stop partying and asking where his sex is, and it all culminates in fucking covering 'Africa' ...

However, surprisingly in the middle of all this, they managed to put out Everything Will Be Alright in the End and the fourth self-titled record, both of which are quite good and suggested that they were rediscovering what made them good in the first place. It didn't last.

So this whole "Everything (X) Has Done Since (Y)" thing wasn't just a one-off, huh?

This describes most bands from the 90s who are still kicking...

such as?

I mean, I get what you're saying re: the particular type of embarrassing Weezer has become, but no one here is really checking for anything past the first few records from like Smashing Pumpkins, Alice In Chains, the Offspring or Bush or whatever

oh my god, Bush is still going

SP have one of ilm's giddiest cliques