What are those albums that are so off-course even the hardcore fans needn't bother

Scrolling through this:

https://the-niche.blog/2018/10/23/all-293-sufjan-stevens-songs-ranked/

It's pretty clear that 75% or more of Sufjan's released material is inessential-- this is not a comment on his capabilities as a creator but a comment on the volume of his released material. (One of my favourite Sufjan songs is "In The Words Of The Governor", a weird track he recorded for The Believer and he is rambling like a gay Mark E Smith and I enjoy to see it, it's a pretty perfect song)

Anyway what is great about BQE is its economy and concision and so I like it. He's not the best composer but he's capable and he worked hard and it is an excellent piece and I listen to it once a year, probably. I like a lot of Adz, too, "I Want To Be Well" is a legitimately terrific song. With Sufjan though (as far as I'm concerned) he's been a "one song on an album" kind of artist ("Flint", "Dress", "Wasp") until "Carrie And Lowell" which just flattened the American Songbook so it's kind of impossible to really understand or parse what is even going on with him

I like the first three Kraftwerk albums fine but find the first two Popol Vuh albums unlistenably bad-- including "In Den Garten Pharaohs" which I know a lot of people rate highly-- I'm sure that people only like that album to be oblique

Are you serious?

Extremely! It's a marvellously terrible record!! And I love all the stuff that comes next

No, I meant about people only liking it to be 'oblique'.

My least favourite record of all time is The Goslings "The Grandeur Of Hair". Songs that a songwriter could write in less time it took to perform them; run the mix through a Big Muff. I love rigor but I cannot abide laziness. "In Den Garten Pharaohs" is a collection of the most poorly formed noodles I can imagine. God. I am listening to "The Grandeur Of Hair" right now just to remind myself. Wow. It is the worst. This is Bruckner, except from Alabama. Or Florida? Let's go with Florida.

And yeah, "liking things just to be oblique" it is a thing. Have you heard of a band called Royal Trux? They are terrible. I adore them. Sometimes I shit sesame seeds and I find them on my ass and I eat them in the shower. I macerate these digested sesame seeds in my front teeth and I think "this tastes like Twin Infinitives sounds" and I enjoy it, similarly.

Uh, OK...

xps yeah it's not really surprising that most of Sufjan's output is inessential when a significant portion of it on a song-by-song basis includes his Christmas boxsets, outtakes collections, and other diversions such as The BQE and Planetarium. i think the core of his discography from Michigan onward has a solid enough through-line though, with some of those diversions helping to fill in the gaps a little, and he's only improved with time really as Adz and C&L are near-perfect to me.

Interesting! I have to revisit Adz, clearly. The heaps of praise pushed on "Impossible Soul" frustrated me around that record when "I Want To Be Well" was such an underremarked achievement

Kylie's "indie" album Impossible Princess has been pretty much been scrubbed off her discography, which I think now goes "Confide In Me" --> Unusually long break --> "Can't Get You Out Of My Head"

James Dean Bradfield & Nicky Wire co-wrote the single IIRC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBSg4_WStsU

― Brainless Addlepated Timid Muddleheaded Awful No-Account (Pheeel), Thursday, 12 September 2019 20:32 (yesterday) link

I don't know if this is true elsewhere but it's definitely not true in Australia:

- firstly because songs like "Did It Again" and "Breathe" did pretty well as singles and she still plays them.

- secondly because MSP only played on two tracks and the balance of the album was more in a Sneaker Pimps first album vein.

- thirdly because the above mixture of styles basically anticipated Natalie Imbruglia's debut album about a month later and it didn't feel "off course" at the time even if kylie subsequently opted for course correction (my theory on this: because Impossible Princess under-performed commercially, the subsequent 'Intimate and Live' tour leaned quite strongly into kylie's most reliable audience sub-component, being her gay fans; her subsequent recognition that they form her base has since shaped all her subsequent aesthetic choices).

- fourthly because outside of the UK (where the critical reception was predominantly "lol, kylie is not shifting units anymore, sux to be u") the critical reaction to the album was mostly positive.

- fourthly because the album in between impossible princess and "can't get you out of my head" (2000's light years) was massively successful here, going four times platinum. Although the following album Fever is a big improvement on the same basic idea.

- fifthly and most importantly, because Impossible Princess is precisely the kind of album that trv kvlt fans like to say is their favourite (and indeed this tends to be the default stance adopted by kylie stans). It's more akin to, say, Smashing Pumpkins Adore in that regard.

What I think is interesting about the album is that kylie has said she will avoid making an album like it again (basically, an album so personal) because she was too hurt by the gleeful savaging it met in the UK. An interesting separate thread would be listing albums that the artists have said they can never repeat because to do so would be too painful (for whatever reason) (as opposed to because it was bad or a mistake).

Great post Tim

Can somebody confirm or deny that Big Star's "In Space" belongs in this thread, I've never listened to it, I can't bear to, I love that band so much and can't deal with a sad ending.

I feel like i'd maybe save Lionheart just for "In Search of Peter Pan" but given I haven't listened to the album in more than 20 years I really can't complain about its inclusion here.

xps "Impossible Soul" is tremendous and i love it but "I Want to Be Well" is possibly my favourite song he's ever done

is Impossible Princess really the trv kvlt Kylie stan album these days? i thought it was a fan-favourite, sure but i thought it was more of the old-school rockist's pick for her best because she wrote her own songs! and worked with MSP! or at least that's how i've seen it advocated for lol

Tim I guess we would include Blood on the Tracks in that list - "A lot of people tell me they enjoy that album. It’s hard for me to relate to that. I mean, you know, people enjoying that kind of pain?" He sure never went there again.

As a byproduct of their intense identification with and/or fetishism of the artist-qua-artist, pop stans tend to hold a lot of values we might otherwise associate with rockism: an emphasis on how personally meaningful or deeply felt the artistic product is, whether it is "brave" or "bold" or autobiographical. In particular, they tend to be attracted to the fetishism of "difficult" works that only the fans can truly understand.

With Madonna, for example, this manifests not just in a lot of consensus-conforming stanning for Like A Prayer and Ray of Light, but also contra-stanning for Erotica and (perhaps more surprisingly) American Life.

But it's fair to say that the pop stan appreciation of Impossible Princess is definitely not premised on her working with the Manic Street Preachers (I'd actually be surprised if there were many people at all who held that position: "Where The Wild Roses Grow" seems like the more obvious candidate for kylie-but-credible).

xpost - yeah that's a good one. I feel like i've read Robert Smith say similar things about Pornography, although that may be more "you're only that young and self-absorbed once".

I don’t have particularly fond memories of Pornography, but I think it’s one of the best things we’ve ever done, and it would have never got made if we hadn’t taken things to excess. People have often said, “Nothing you’ve done has had the same kind of intensity or passion.” But I don’t think you can make too many albums like that, because you wouldn’t be alive.

sorry for the derail

actually thanks a lot for that link! One of the best RS retrospective interviews I've read (although it's always puzzling to see his self-awareness and critical sense dissolve after Wish)

Can somebody confirm or deny that Big Star's "In Space" belongs in this thread, I've never listened to it, I can't bear to, I love that band so much and can't deal with a sad ending.

― flamboyant goon tie included

i like the first song "dony"! i don't know who wrote it. the rest is your standard alex chilton self-sabotage thing as far as i remember. i get it, i've done the self-sabotage thing and i don't have nearly as much to sabotage as chilton did, but it's still painful.

regarding my only liking music to be "oblique", i've had plenty of people accuse me of that, but i don't think it's true! like you i will listen to music that i openly admit to be terrible, but i don't really ever choose listen to music i don't enjoy. even if other people are repulsed by it, even if _i'm_ repulsed by what i'm listening to, doesn't mean i don't also like it on its own merits, whether that's "metal machine music" or 1980s aor.

Depends on how 'hardcore fan' is defined, but a lot of hardcore Who fans don't bother with 'Endless Wire', any of individual solo albums, or even 'It's Hard' or 'By Numbers'.

― just another country (snoball), Thursday, September 12, 2019 4:56 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Who fans are all over the place. I know Who fanatics who will seek out every pressing variation of the Lisztomania soundtrack, and others who hate everything after Tommy.

I've never known any Who fans to ignore By Numbers, but there seems to be consensus on It's Hard being awful and Endless Wire not "really" being the Who.

For me, there's maybe two near-brilliant things on It's Hard, alongside their worst-ever songs. And Endless Wire is mostly wonderful ("Mike Post Theme" and "Tea and Theatre" are two of the best things they've ever done), though the production isn't great.

fgti for the record you are 100% wrong about Royal Trux, The Goslings and Popol Vuh. just letting you know.

and yeah also absurdly judgemental and wrong with the whole "liking it just to be oblique angle" - you don't get to tell me why I like things

I wasn’t accusing you of liking things only to be “oblique”! It was a general comment, an acknowledgement that I do it, myself, sometimes— not “listening to music to be oblique” but “claiming to rate albums highly that aren’t very good”— and it’s less about being “oblique” I suppose as it is about doing so to appear “interesting” I guess

wrong again, but whatever. I guess you can't actually envision someone appreciating Twin infinitives as a great album, your loss imo

I suppose if the track "Vuh" doesn't make the hair on the back of your neck stand up then it doesn't ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I don't think I'm making myself clear, I like Twin Infinitives; also, I eat my own boogers sometimes. (The Emperor Wears No Clothes album with that band is "Cats And Dogs".)

I don't think it's a particularly ground-breaking or revolutionary idea that "some of the albums you love? you love them not because you enjoy them, but because you want to be a person who enjoys that album". Like... isn't this oftentimes how we're all talking about music?"

I listened again to "Pharaos" last night (and I'm listening to "Hossianna Mantra" right now! it is so nice) and "Vuh" is pretty but a slog, it's really the A-side that bothers me, and even then, it's impossible for me to extricate the content from the reputation.

I've always found the idea of Popol Vuh more compelling than their actual discography, with the notable exception of 'Vuh'.

fgti for the record you are 100% wrong about Royal Trux

yeah I'm baffled at any RTX fan who thinks they aren't technically "good" - for one thing Neil is a *really* fucking good guitar player, def in my top 10.

and I mean that just on a technical level, he is a very fleet-fingered and versatile player.

I said "Royal Trux are a terrible band" and also "I love them", I at no point cast aspersions on Neil's guitar capabilities (and I wouldn't see why his capabilities on the guitar would have any bearing on whether his band is terrible or not, and whether or not I love them)

I do not understand why you cannot comprehend that somebody might have a more complicated relationship to a piece of music than simply "I love this, and thus the band is good, and thus Neil Hagerty is a really fucking good guitar player". There is stuff that exists that is not good, and I love it, and it is not good for reasons that are more complicated than Neil Hagerty's guitar chops, and I love it for more complicated reasons than x-y-z, possibly because I enjoy being the sort of person who listens to Twin Infinitives once a year at the very least as an ear-cleaning exercise.

And I am extremely not wrong about The Goslings. That is some goddamn terrible music, the worst I've ever heard, maybe and probably.

The literal only way I could communicate my love for Twin Infinitives was a very candid admission that I chew undigested sesame seeds that I find on my buttocks in the shower and I enjoy it

I do not understand at which point in the creation of this metaphor that I might have suggested that Neil Hagerty's fingers were not fleet

I guess I don't understand what you think is "not good" about something you love. that division between quality and appreciation doesn't make any sense to me.

Really? Music that I really love, like, say, Tori Amos or David Bowie, I have a far deeper understanding about what is good and what is bad about it. One might perceive that I'm actually not-a-fan of Amos or Bowie because I might speak about them so critically, but it's not the case at all-- the engagement I have with their work is far deeper, and I'm better able to analyze and understand and so on

I mean, case in point, I'm a huge fan of Sufjan, but that fandom only happened with Adz, and with C&L he's like... one of the greatest living songwriters. I say this as somebody who would roll their eyes when Chicago started playing on the cafe speakers when I was trying to enjoy some brunch. Critical engagement is a sign of respect, as far as I'm concerned

you're really wrong on Vuh. you may not like it but most people do and it's not an album that in any way shape or form fits this thread.

Well

That was one of like seven albums I posited as fitting this thread. Eno's "The Drop" is surely the cake

I don't imagine many here have heard it, but I dragged out Steve Harley's Hobo with a Grin because of this thread, and it still sucks. I love all the early Cockney Rebel stuff, but this is so stuffed with LA session hacks, uninspired songwriting and bad singing, it's just ghastly. And Steve agreed:

"I looked at that LP the other day – looking is enough. I can't bear to listen to it. It's the worst thing I've ever done. I just want to forget about it. Trash. In fact, I'm getting the old Cockney Rebel band together for a concert in London at the end of this month. And there won't be one song from the "Hobo with a Grin" LP in the set."[11]

xxp I actually get what you are saying about Royal Trux, think you make a good point, and personally interact the same way with Bob Drake's music.

The Drop doesn't really fix this either. It's not that left-field. It's not super memorable but it's hardly way way way out of the ordinary weird and bad for him.

Modulate by Bob Mould might fit though. I don't like it. I dont' know anyone who does. Maybe someone does.

The Wedding Present's Ukranian album probably qualifies.

Really wish I could un-read fgti's little yarn

Might be some Piano Magic and I'd be surprised if Kozelek doesn't have something that would fit someday.

I guess this kind of doesn't count, but it's not far away. As much as I adored Yeah Yeah Yeahs in the 00's - they made 3 fucking great albums, the reviews (and cover, g'damn) of Mosquito made it so I've never actually heard it.

Maybe that's off course? They didn't come back from it. Is it worth hearing?

^Albums you have spurned

Still not sure if albums from bands that have had a significant membership change should count here. Nevertheless, the J Geils Band released an album without Peter Wolf and the results were this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=289lzL6Eit8

xp I spurned yes. Is it worth my time going there? I've literally not heard good word of it.

Really wish I could un-read fgti's little yarn

― #YABASIC (morrisp), Friday, September 13, 2019 1:33 PM (one hour ago)

rude

Nevertheless, the J Geils Band released an album without Peter Wolf and the results were this:

I remember that getting some FM airplay when it came out, for about a week. And iirc, Rolling Stone gave the album four stars, for some reason.