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

Stipe's singing seemed radically oblique at the time, impressionistic, or expressionistic, or Rousseau/Chagall or whatever painting analogy you wanted to throw at it. The jangle itself was pretty unique too after fifteen years of overdriven rock/metal/punk guitar. Something something kudzu, something something New South, something something deaf in one ear. By 1986 there were a zillion American bands with a similar enough sound, and C86 and Flying Nun kicking in from overseas. REM were clever enough to leave what they pioneered behind.

Booming post, bendy! Don't sleep on Bill Berry's off-kilter funky beats either.

yeah the beats! I don’t know how to describe it.

yes, great post, bendy

i honestly don't think there is one of these that exists for me? part of it is i'm increasingly lazy, lol. maybe some newer acts with young hipster appeal like 100 gecs, i tried a few times with them nope not gonna happen. i like the new charli xcx though - not sure but i think there was some relation.

one thing that i'm not even going to try but is very much *relevant to my demographic* is arca. also this new artist that PAN is pushing in my facebook feed called Eartheater. i can't get past the visual aesthetic. just not my thing really. i mean if anyone wants to rep for them maybe i'll try listening to something lol.

oh maybe a good one actually is anohni - i feel like i should definitely like their work and keep coming back to it and have been genuinely impressed by some things but i've never fallen for it. i will probably try again with them.

this makes me feel a little shook to admit but pj harvey kind of falls into this category for me. i genuinely love some things but a lot of her work just hasn't connected with me at all. will probably try again with her at some point though, have a feeling she'll make more sense to me in a few years.

I like 100 gecs just fine so long as people don't go doing things like comparing them to Daphne & Celeste.

shows how much i gaf

wait n/m i was misreading you

I like Murmur/Reckoning, love Automatic/Hi-fi (and even Monster to a degree), but find the praise for Document/Green/Out Of Time mystifying. Green in particular is really not for me

same ambivalence towards the middle period here. Document is definitely an album I “keep trying to like but can’t get into”, however.

Lifes Rich Pageant tho...

“Cuyahoga” rules, love Mills’ backing vox in the chorus

The insurgency began and you missed it.

bill berry is an american hero

fgti plz re-listen to "Near Wild Heaven" and "Me In Honey", the strength of Out Of Time is the deep cuts

The "Half a World Away" -> "Texarkana" –> "Country Feedback" section roolz too.

There's a lot of 'rediscovered geniuses' I can't really get into - Rodriguez, for instance, I tried playing his album yesterday and had to take it off. However I was playing the first two Bill Fay albums the other day and I liked them more than I ever had before, I like his voice.

It's funny. Like fgti, I cannot get into Green, but Document is an amazing record that sounds politically prescient, and as mentioned by sleeve and NNN, Out of Time is really just gorgeous.

I was actually thinking the other day about the moment when the saxophone hits on "Fireplace," how it redeems this otherwise okay song

I also just don't comprehend how someone can hear the opening notes of "Disturbance at the Heron House" and not become irrationally exuberant.

I am more than good with eleven (!) R.E.M. records up to and including Up

+ Chronic Town=12

I had to give up on Jandek in the end, I think the idea trumps the reality.

I'm with fgti on Green and Out of Time. I have actually never given Document a close listen and should remedy that. It's not that the songs aren't as good on Green and OOT; rather, it's the bright, airy production. The mystery and obscurity of the earlier stuff is gone, and the warmth and depth of AFTP and New Adventures hasn't come in yet (Monster is its own beast obv). I love lots of songs on those albums but they feel embarrassingly dated to listen to. Exceptions are when the production fills out more -- either as an aesthetic choice that works (Near Wild Heaven) or in service to the song (Orange Crush). But would love to hear what songs like You Are the Everything, Low, even Endgame would sound like if they were produced like AFTP was. I love everything up to and including Life's Rich Pageant.

Out Of Time is my favourite REM. Of the ones I've heard, Green is my least fave, so I don't know what that means

Other than Murmur and a few of the hits, I generally struggle with IRS era REM. it's all fuzzy and obfuscated and the songs just don't seem to stick

I hated Losing My Religion so much due to overexposure that I don't think I've ever actually listened to Out of Time in its entirety.

I like IRS-era REM because the band sounds so wired. I remember when I first heard The La's I thought "this is what I've always wanted REM and The Smiths to sound like"... all three bands are effectively "Big Star, but faster". Big Star is one of my favourite-ever bands fwiw

I feel that Document-to-Monster-era REM started trading a full paintbox for primary colours, the mystery sounds became scarcer. There were still many good songs, but previously the singles had been highlights of the albums; starting with The One I Love, they became more obvious, two-chord riffs or conventional ballads.

There's a lot of 'rediscovered geniuses' I can't really get into - Rodriguez, for instance, I tried playing his album yesterday and had to take it off. However I was playing the first two Bill Fay albums the other day and I liked them more than I ever had before, I like his voice.

― Young Boys of Bernie (Tom D.), Tuesday, November 3, 2020 6:03 AM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah rodriguez was ultimately pretty mediocre, good story though

fay is amazing

I think I was able to respond to those mid-period R.E.M. records, and still love them, because they were bailing out before the sell-by date. The production choices said to me that they were owning the fact that the vibe and mystery of those early records was unsustainable. (Peter Buck was already 31 by the time of Document!) In that regard Green e.g. feels to me more left-field and denser with "aura" than say, Fables.

(Peter Buck was already 31 by the time of Document!)

i didn't know that! crazy

After Murmur and LRP, Document is my favorite REM record.

I don't 'listen' to Jandek, but I can kind of agree that the idea is much more interesting than the reality, which is...simply put, eerie and depressing.

I find the idea of Jandek so interesting, I have never listened to the records.

My first try with Jandek was This Narrow Road, which was one of his spoken word albums, and it kept me from trying again for a long time. I was flipping through the used CD bins and was so excited to see a copy in the wild at that point that I just grabbed it, with no idea at the time that he had even done spoken word stuff. Tried again a few years later with Ready for the House, which was much closer to what I expected to hear.

TS: Jandek spoken word albums vs Jandek solo upright bass albums

in my early twenties i frequented the message board "i hate music" (which i didn't even realize at the time was named in response to ilm) and there was some guy on there who was a jandek obsessive. that board was all arty noise-adjacent white boys lol.

I actually kind of love it, but I lump it in with other unlistenable stuff like Reynols and Human Skab. It's interesting to listen to once and play for other people who are into weird stuff, for atmosphere on freeform radio shows, etc. Otherwise, I don't think anyone has been like "let's go home and listen to Jandek."

Honestly the Jandek I go back to most is the live Chicago Wednesday because it has Joshua Abrams and John McEntire made up his rhythm section.

I haven't paid attention in years after some time in college being obsessed with him.

The live albums can be cool, depending on the local musicians he picks up to play with him.

lol never heard of human skab. reynols are legit though xps

The live albums can be cool, depending on the local musicians he picks up to play with him.

Essentially he's outsider music's answer to Chuck Berry.

I fucking love Jandek and own all 22 original LPs, but he def belongs here

the lyrics were actually my gateway into his world, fwiw

Genesis are turning out to be one of these. 'And the word was' and 'invisible touch' were the ones i taped from the library as a little kid and to this day, the Silent Sun is my favorite song of theirs.

I've recently read that Jim O Rourke interview where he talks about taping the lamb lies down on broadway from the library as a little kid, except the last song got cut off. there's an embed of 'Anyway' and i really liked it on first listen, so i promptly took to soulseek and. I HATED IT. Though not 'It' which i have not heard because the user logged off just before the download finished, so I ended up with the same album as Jim O funnily enough.

I have a similar story about Nursery Cryme from 10 years ago, etc, ABACAB a couple of years ago etc etc. just cant get into Genesis.

I taped Lamb off my 2LP set onto a C90 as a kid and yup, "It" didn't fit.

On prerecorded cassette it was often sold as two tapes. I saw the second half in an otherwise pretty well "curated" used bin by itself today. Seems an album that often has orphaned elements.

I've gotten into Genesis over a really long span, first enjoying the s/t and Invisible Touch around age 10, then getting into the Gabriel years (though Lamb took longer for some reason, maybe due to sheer length); for a long time the '76-82 period was opaque to me, but it really opened up in my late 20s when issued as a box set (even as the remixes in that set later came to seem over-the-top in-your face). This process seems to be ongoing: while it didn't exactly become my favorite, ...And Then There Were Three only revealed itself to me last year, in the sense that now I can look at the tracklisting and remember what the songs sound like.

I've also probably bought more different copies/releases of each Genesis albums than those of anyone else (at least three times each up through Duke). Probably discovering them while quite young led to them seeming like a mystery ever to be discovered, even when the material is sort of banal. "Origin is the goal," natch!

I like to pretend that Genesis were a little known band that recorded 2 lps in 1971-72 Trespass and Nursery Cryme.
Don't like what they settled on after taht. But those 2 just about work, band in major transition between the school line up and the commercial one I guess. Do have a bit of a soft spot for thsoe 2 and the live material from immediately around then.
NOt really sat down and listened to Lamb though.

of all the classic prog bands Genesis took the longest to get into. I bought Selling England by the Pound and listened to it over and over like "what am I supposed to be hearing here?" I think the guitar solo on "Dancing With the Moonlit Night" and the long keyboard outro to "Cinema Show" finally got me.

I like PG-era Genesis a lot but their forays into British whimsy have always been lost on me.

I'll take PG's British whimsy (the Willow Farm part of Supper's Ready) any day over Phil's hamminess (robbery assault and battery, like china, and um, illegal alien)