Which band has the best discography?

womp womp

lol

D'Angelo is a good answer

The rap answer might be Biggie :(

surely M|A|R|R|S gets posted by now every time one of these threads is done

aren't there a bunch of Biggie verses scattered across all kinds of shitty post-mortem crap?

Wire - aside from maybe half of "Manscape" and "The First Letter", but both have great bits as well. The rest of their catalog is consistently stellar.

had skinny puppy truly hung it up after the process

surely M|A|R|R|S gets posted by now every time one of these threads is done

― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic)

i was gonna say elizabeth city state, myself

Big Star never made a bad record

― Οὖτις

never sure when people say these things if they have forgotten about in space or if they actually like that record

Also, yeah, I would be hard pressed to name a bad Beatles song tbh

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten)

i could name a half a dozen beatles song i hate, i won't because then the thread would just fill up with people trying to convince me that "you know my name, look up the number" isn't that bad, gtfo with that

not a band per se but duke is goddamn insuperable, greatest recording artist in the history of music imo. a bad duke ellington record, _that_ i would have trouble with. duke ellington was great in 1927 and was also great in 1970, with no real point in between where he _wasn't_ great.

if they have forgotten about in space

oh shit, that me

:(

Broadcast!

The answer is so obvious. Joy Division. Two perfect albums, no really bad song in their whole oeuvre including b-sides and stuff.

lol sister ray zzzz

Joy Division mostly sucks

(I say mostly because they have three songs I like)

Broadcast seconded!

Also and this is a feeling I’m just starting to feel so bear with me but maybe Jon Hassell?

portishead

Dolly Mixture

Considering bands with a big output Stereolab have to be taking into account. The quality of their work is consistently high.

Gonna go out on a limb here and say Autechre. I mean there's a LOT to sift through, and that's just their last three full length releases, but every album, EP, b-side, one off, most remixes, even collaborations are all very interesting and engaging at a minimum, and intensely beautiful and otherworldly when they hit their peak, which still happens every release. While their albums have a tendency to be somewhat inconsistent at times (there's more than a few songs I tend to skip), I've found bangers and classics on every single record. Often the songs I consider skip-worthy are tracks others here fawn over (I've noticed imago and I have very differing tastes when it comes to specific Ae tracks for instance). This speaks to their appeal and consistency. Considering the amount of time they've been relevant (nearly 30 years? Fuck me) that's impressive as all hell. Now, that said - they have a pretty significant stylistic split between 1990-2000 and 2001-present but if you're into both styles, that's a lot of amazing music to take in.

The Normal

Gonna go out on a limb here and say Autechre

oh yeah this is the answer

literally everything is worth listening to and figuring out your own relationship with it

I'd go with Goldfrapp. Even their weaker albums (Head First, Silver Eye) are still 8/10.

you say autechre i say boards of canada.

xxp yea the only one of them I think is less than great is Draft which for whatever reason is still somewhat impenetrable to me, outside of 6IE.CR & V-PROC

The Smiths must be a contender for this trophy. There is hardly a crap song in their catalogue and so many jewels. There is def. more consistency than in The Beatles discography. The Smiths did not make an Ob-la-di-ob-la-da.

early Autechre has not aged well imo

Codeine
Bark Psychosis
Talk Talk

Roxy Music

Yeah, Talk Talk and Roxy Music are both to be considered.

early Autechre has not aged well imo

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Tuesday, January 28, 2020 3:10 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

how early we talking? incunabula is their weakest record but "bike" still goes. after that everything is golden

early Ae still sounds pretty good to me, I think the two that sound the most dated are Tri Rep (too crunchy & dry) and LP5, which is a bit over-the-top in that late 90's Aphex way that wasn't really followed up on. but I still think they've held up better than any other 90s IDM records outside of maybe Music Has the Rights to Children

i've been listening to trip rep a lot lately and idk it still sounds like the future to me

early Autechre has not aged well imo

I agree to a certain extent. Though their debut remains one of my favs from that era. Amber is actually my least favorite Ae album at this stage, but even that has some outright classics like Glitch, Yulquen and Teartear. However, Tri-Rep and Chiastic still hold up for me. Everything afterwards, once they really got into FM synthesis, has a very modern sound to it that absolutely still holds up to my ears.

Their 90's peak between 95-98 honestly could use some remastering/remixing. A lot of it sounds somewhat flat by today's standards. Would love to hear how it sounds with some restorative polish. Worked well for Kraftwerk

how early we talking? incunabula is their weakest record but "bike" still goes. after that everything is golden

This is why I love these guys. So many differing opinions on their records...

Yes, Broadcast, I was trying to make a sampler of their earlier stuff and gave up after realising I couldn't leave off anything from their compilation of early singles/EPs

i love the place amber takes me to specifically but i can also understand why someone would think that’s their weakest

take out the early stuff and you still have 2.5 decades of quality, and all of the side eps are events unto themselves

The fact that there's no consensus bad record from them says a lot.

Autechre's early stuff is their best, when they were still making techno. It's been downhill ever since.

^^^ see they even inspire the wrongest tuomas opinion possible, they win

Fugazi, Drive By Truckers, Smiths... I can get behind Autechre, Roxy, CCR ...

Fela's catalogue is extremely consistent; to a fault, some might say, but there's very few I'd warn people away from

A related question is the best band with exactly one album (or, for that matter, exactly one single).

A band that released exactly one undeniably perfect song, and then immediately broke up, could potentially win this category.

A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger) at 3:13 28 Jan 20

is there a bad Duke Ellington record?

there's probably a ton of old jazz artists who never made an out and out bad record

Uncle Tupelo

A band that released exactly one undeniably perfect song, and then immediately broke up, could potentially win this category.

― Okay, you're an ambulance (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, January 28, 2020 3:23 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

surely M|A|R|R|S gets posted by now every time one of these threads is done

― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic), Tuesday, January 28, 2020 2:23 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

anyway I think my answer for this has to be Susumu Hirasawa, who from 1979 until now has put out about 30 "main" albums (including P-Model obviously), of which only maybe 2 or 3 are less than "very good". on top of that there's a ton of supplemental material worth checking out, not to mention the soundtrack work. of course there are a lot of artists who are very consistently good but Hirasawa is particularly interesting because like Autechre his music is constantly progressing, going from being part of a scene to something that's essentially peerless, and like Ae you're not really sure where the 'peak' is, you could argue for it being pretty much anywhere

if one-off all-star records count I would take "All in the Same Gang" over MARRS any day of the week

The Blue Nile have to be worth mentioning (for a change). Holy Love is probably the only weak song they put out.

I want to say Rockpile, counting the records also nominally by Lowe and Edmunds, but basically all the same band

I agree In a Glass House & The Power and the Glory are pretty similar but the rest of GG's records seem pretty distinct to me

fwiw I think The Missing Piece is alright, especially the proggier second half. Giant for a Day on the other hand...who knows what they were thinking. has a Love Beach sorta vibe to it. what gets me about these records isn't so much that they suck, it's that the production is so weak and the performances so dispirited...its like the band themselves didn't really buy it either.

What's the New Mary Jane is pretty bad

A Taste of Honey

there's others...

They didn't release What's the New Mary Jane or write A Taste of Honey, so not sure what the point is here...

I know they're not an ILM fave but Elbow's discography has been incredibly consistent.

― akm, Saturday, 1 February 2020 17:06 (three days ago)

Elbow's is the only front-to-back catalog I regularly turn and return to as often as The Beatles and Underworld.

But also, Underworld. Dubno... to the present.

(The false start that is/was Underneath the Radar need not apply.)

What's the New Mary Jane was released on Beatles Anthology 3

the OP makes no mention of authorship

xps

and if we’re being extra pedantic OP says “every single thing a band has recorded” (i.e. whether the band released the recording or not shouldn’t matter, leaks and bootlegs fair game, presumably that’s what “loosies” means)

Loosies are songs on, like, soundtracks and comps.

Leaks and bootlegs are up to your own discretion I guess

not even leaks, everything that was ever put on tape, even if they recorded over it later

adding in things that were deliberately not released at the time, only decades after the band split and a member or two died (as with Beatles and Go-Betweens), means that every other act in the thread also ought to be judged by the material they thought was too bad to release.

― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic), Saturday, February 1, 2020 9:07 AM (four days ago)

yup

― Οὖτις, Saturday, February 1, 2020 9:10 AM (four days ago)

Beatles Anthology 3 is an officially released comp

this is a stupid argument

which good band / artist has the worst discography?

imo if members are dead and the band split up decades earlier, then the intent was clearly not to release the abandoned demos as an authoritative contribution to the discography

this is a stupid argument

agreed, especially if we extend this to cover the entire thread

what is the argument ? i was really only noting that, if you wanted to, you could count bootlegs in a band's discography. or you don't have to. sometimes unofficial shit, particularly concert fan recordings and scrapped studio sessions, are essential to "knowing" a band's discography, at least to some fans. i'm not trying to make "rules" and my post was sort of in jest.

then again other times an artist comes around and says, "yeah those bootlegs, we own that, here they are officially." that was one of the main points of the anthology series ! see also dylan for another obvious example.

which good band / artist has the worst discography?

Black Flag

In a similar vein: Bad Brains

I'd go with The Kinks there, you remove a 5-year chunk of their 30-year career and pretty much all that's left is garbage with a handful of good singles

Start a new thread!

Joan Osborn- One Of Us.

I'm admittedly an album or two behind, but unless she's inexplicably gone into a qualitative freefall: Tara Jane O'Neill. And even if you feel like plugging all of her side work into the equation, it's still a pretty gahdamn unstoppable discography.

Hmm, no mention of Rush or the Ramones in here ...

Catherine Christer Hennix

whoa

Have The Fall been mentioned yet? Seems an obvious choice to me.

They have (I re-read this thread last night); but as much as I’m a fan, I would not call their catalogue “flawless”…

lol definitely not

Yoshio Machida