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

Sleep's Dopesmoker is my #1 favorite music for grading papers. It's slow, it's loud, it encourages focus. I find it functional.

Earthless >>> Sleep

Earthless is distracting for grading papers but I have enjoyed their live show a lot more than I would enjoy Sleep.

oh yeah I have a lot of music that is "work music" and I can totally see Dopesmoker in that vein

Muslimgauze too, music for the zone

I def can't get into any Earth-related releases other than Earth 2, it just barely misses my sweet spots

("it" = everything else they've done)

Sleep's Holy Mountain is my favorite too, for much the same reasons that Paul Ponzi noted

Earth is fun to watch live because of how slowly the drums are played. I have never seen anyone play drums that slowly in my life!

xp Holy Mountain is, for me, a classic "keep trying but I can't find a way in" release. whereas the very first time I heard Dopesmoker faintly through a closed door in 2007 I was like "omg what is this I must know"

n.b. I am a fan of very-long-attention-span releases of all genres

I am a fan of very-long-attention-span releases of all genres

Yeah, I'm pretty much the opposite. I listened to the Bad Brains' yellow tape so much in high school that by the time you hit the 90-second mark I'm looking at my watch.

lol, fair. Depending on how it hits me, at 90 seconds sometimes I'm thinking "wow it'd be awesome if it just kept doing this for a long time"

notice that Pere Ubu has been mentioned a few times. I remember being artificially blown away on the first couple of listens, and from then on... everything ungainly & irritating about them suddenly became the focal point, and I never cared to listen again.

i bought dopesmoker, smoked some dope, tried to zone in, and it just wasn't for me. that's ok! i can very much see how they work and why they are beloved.

they're too loud to be my work music, and i like that about them and would love to see them play sometime.

Seefeel - I keep trying since they tick all my boxes but I always get bored.

x-post - yeah seeing them live is key I feel. I have and occasionally play some of their stuff, but it doesn't come close to the full body/mind experiences I've experienced each time (n=2) I've seen them live. So don't sleep on it when they're playing in your area!

Even as a Pere Ubu fan, I have to admit that "ungainly and irritating" is more-or-less their raison d'etre.

Yeah, but it's like the Fall or Captain Beefheart, right? What starts off as annoying slowly becomes exciting, given enough time and an open mind. I hated all those bands the first few times I heard them - Pere Ubu, jeez, David's voice is nails on a chalkboard! But wait, something keeps making me revisit their stuff, and then as other music is integrated into my world view, what once was repellant becomes beloved. I have no idea how that process works but I love it when it does.

The Fall & Captain Beefheart, yes there is so much there to reward repeat listens even when certain tracks continue to grate. But Pere Ubu... just too opaque to my ears, abrasive as a starting point, so that even when they do tone things down a bit & attempt to shift dynamics, there's still a petulant hardiness at the core. mind you, this is probably precisely why a lot of people like them. it's just very hard work for me.

David Thomas's solo box set was the entry point for me, I was instantly obsessed with Monster Walks the Winter Lake and Meadville. It was a cheap box set, 5 cd's for the price of a double album.

why do these arty rock acts always inspire the most "listen to it until you like it", which could apply to almost any unfamiliar sort of music? i used to get the sense that it was almost a duty to be into these artists, they separated real music fans from poseurs, and if you didn't like it you just didn't get it (whereas music disliked by these fans is just bad, no question of not getting it, of course they do). in fact i remember some vocal fall/beefheart fans totally writing off jazz (they wouldn't be so eager to do so now i hope) and i'd be accused of snobbery/pretension/"just pretending to like" (the same stuff they'd been accused of) if i parroted their own lines back to them in that case

the artist i probably put most effort into trying to like without success was tom waits, i came away with an appreciation of the songwriting and a handful of songs i really like while actually disliking his whole deal a lot more than i did before. these days i'd never go to the same effort for something i don't like, if i'm trying at all it's trying to love something i already quite like or am intrigued by

Imo there are a lot of acts people may be prone to gong for really obvious, mundane reasons. Waits, for example, or Rush, for that matter, the vocals alone might be enough to turn people off, with the music a distant second. Same could be said for, maybe, Pere Ubu, or Beefheart, or the like. Then there's music that's aggressive and designed as a sonic assault endurance test, like metal or whatever, with fast tempos and distorted guitars. Or, I dunno, some of the more aggressive Aphex Twin or Naked City. Doesn't exactly fade into the background, so if you're not into it you're just not into it. The tougher stuff, in a sense, may be the music you *must* pay attention to, which can mean the aforementioned but often means slower, or quieter, or very dynamic, which can pose its own listening challenges. Like (as mentioned) Seefeel, or Talk Talk, or "Music for Airports." Last, and most fitting perhaps with the thread, is stuff that's outright designed to challenge, stuff like the last couple of Low albums, which are objectively beautiful *and* ugly/noisy/distorted/disorienting, but whose beauty is often most obvious only in contrast to the noise, or after you've acclimated to the noise to the point where it's just part of the beauty. I'm trying to think of more stuff like that, but I'm coming up blank for the moment.

the smiths and anything ruined with bernard sumner singing!

King Krule

Some people whose music taste I respect seem to like him and I can’t stand the way he chooses to sing

the artist i probably put most effort into trying to like without success was tom waits, i came away with an appreciation of the songwriting and a handful of songs i really like while actually disliking his whole deal a lot more than i did before. these days i'd never go to the same effort for something i don't like, if i'm trying at all it's trying to love something i already quite like or am intrigued by

― Left, Thursday, July 8, 2021 12:12 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

this is very close to my experience with waits too.

pere ubu, that's a good answer. i spent years trying to like dub housing and the modern dance. i love the pop group and weird post-punk generally, but god, their whole thing is just so tiresome and unappealing. doesn't help that dave thomas is a huge prick by all accounts. rocket from the tombs, on the other hand, were obviously great.

here's one that will probably get me fired from ilx: wire.

Have you listened to any of the more commercial/accessible Ubu or Wire albums, like Cloudland or A Bell Is a Cup Until It Is Struck?

I thought of my own answer for this: Weather Report. I've heard four of their albums, and despite their obvious musical intelligence, imagination and talent, it only becomes more than "interesting" or "pleasant" for a minute or so at a time. I do love the Zawinul album from 1971, though, which was really what I was looking for from them.

They had several phases; I like most of what they did *until* Jaco Pastorius joined, at which point it all went to shit. I don’t understand the Cult of Jaco *at all*.

Joni was the only one who knew what to do with him.

I'll probably like their first album best when I get around to it.

I like his first solo album and his work on Pat Metheny's Bright Size Life too, but otherwise, yeah

I’ve seen several mentions of Tom Waits in the thread but I don’t get what makes it so hard. He has soft songs and hard songs, sincere songs and pretentious songs, cool songs and pathetic songs, artsy songs and stupid songs… maybe I drink too much wine but I can’t imagine not liking at least one song of his.

Not implying only wine drinkers enjoy his music, but it certainly helps.

my dad had Swordfishtrombones and Rain Dogs on tape and we used to listen to them in the car, just fun, weird music, not at all impenetrable.

I'm a big Waits fan but I get why he grates on people

I am strictly "only the early stuff" with Pere Ubu, up to and including Modern Dance is A+ but yeah the guy is such a dick that I have zero interest in anything after (even tho I saw them in 1987, he was a dick then too)

Wire's 154 is def something I can't get into aside from Map Ref, so yeah that's a fair call

waits is pretty accessible with his tunes and even arrangements it's the "character" stuff that is bothersome. i know that's part of the fun for fans & i'm not anti-theatre but the drunken hobo with a heart of gold thing is just boring when it's not offensive. my favourite song is "i don't wanna grow up" which may be another character song but feels less overly-mediated than the others

with wire i find 154 a lot more approachable than pink flag, it seems to have actual feelings. mostly cold alienated abstracted feelings but also a real sense of sadness and regret over that distance. i listened to it over and over during a family crisis in early 2020 and i'd never really been into wire before. pink flag never made me feel much more than "i see what they did there" or "this one is pretty catchy i suppose" and that was all i knew from them for years

I can't really imagine listening to Wire for 'feelings' tbh.

what do you listen to music for

Define what you mean by feelings maybe?

I mean, "154" has more traditionally emotional lyrics (for the most part) than "Pink Flag" but maybe that's not what you're referring to.

I'm thinking more in terms of emotions than feelings there, which is maybe not what you're driving at.

this is just asking me to walk into the false dichotomy of intellect vs emotion so i'll concede that satisfaction/pleasure/interest in conceptual cleverness is also feelings. what i meant was that album made wire seem more like people trying to processes their own shit rather than some kind of moving-target trickster act. maybe preferring the former is missing the point of the band

what's the difference between emotions and feelings? is feelings broader

shitft

LOL you can tell I haven't exactly thought this through this early in the morning! But, the lyrics on "154" seem more personal and the music (possibly) more emotional, though some might say overwrought. It's not really whether or not it's the point of the band, it's just that it's never really been what they do - well, not if Colin Newman has anything to do with it.

why do these arty rock acts always inspire the most "listen to it until you like it", which could apply to almost any unfamiliar sort of music? i used to get the sense that it was almost a duty to be into these artists, they separated real music fans from poseurs, and if you didn't like it you just didn't get it (whereas music disliked by these fans is just bad, no question of not getting it, of course they do). in fact i remember some vocal fall/beefheart fans totally writing off jazz (they wouldn't be so eager to do so now i hope) and i'd be accused of snobbery/pretension/"just pretending to like" (the same stuff they'd been accused of) if i parroted their own lines back to them in that case

yeah

i kind of regret my specific examples there, it's because i looked up to a certain crowd for too long & since then became reflexively bitter about some of the music they liked, i should probably get over that (not necessarily liking the music, just not resenting it). i don't think anyone is faking their love for [band] or anything. but i still have to defend actually liking pop or r&b to people IRL way more than i'd like to & it's way too tempting to try to out-avant them instead, because it usually works. it's a dirty trick though

there was a revelatory moment for me when I was about 17 and realised that music was not anywhere near as important to most people as it was to me (remember telling friends about this and their response was "yeah, obviously, how did you not know that?" which was fair enough) but I always have to keep repeating this to myself when, for example, I come across a comment on YouTube saying "this is great, not like all the shit music today" and am tempted to tell them to fuck off, this seems to happen roughly every 24 hours.

I’ve seen several mentions of Tom Waits in the thread but I don’t get what makes it so hard. He has soft songs and hard songs, sincere songs and pretentious songs, cool songs and pathetic songs, artsy songs and stupid songs… maybe I drink too much wine but I can’t imagine not liking at least one song of his.

see, this is precisely my problem with Tom Waits. he tries to bridge too much, never quite engaging concretely with either side of the dichotomy. and in doing so, his characterisation becomes flat & strangely circumspect, the sincerity of his narratives lost within the garb of self-awareness that packages things a little too tightly. I don't think this is strictly an impediment to enjoying his music, I just think people might be gradually put off by the highly conditioned nature of his songwriting.

a notable exception is of course his first album, which I still appreciate for its many unrefined moods.

Tom Waits is almost entirely play acting and theatrics, and I can see how this might ring inauthentic to some listeners.

I know this because I bought into his schtick wholeheartedly as a younger, more naive music fan. In the pre/early internet days, I fell for a lot of these kinds of illusions from artists and bands wholesale. My suspension of belief worked on a high level. Black metal was made by quasi-mythological beings who lived in burnt-out churches, Boards of Canada lived in the woods and survived on a strict diet of psychedelics, and Tom Waits spent most of his life drinking bourbon and hopping trains across America. It didn't occur to me that this was mostly pantomime.

So I remember feeling disillusioned to read interviews with Waits where he admitted as such - that "Tom Waits" is as much a character made up of various touchstones and influences as well as a real person who lives an otherwise normal lifestyle as a recording artist. Of course I've come full circle on this and have come to appreciate everything he does all over again in more recent times.

I've just playgraded a copy of A Love Supreme that's come into the shop* and I figured this would be a great opportunity to finally tackle this one after a dozen attempts in my lifetime, but nope, it's still an unpleasant cacophony.

*crackles all the way through but only really annoying and noticeable in the quiet bits. VG- I think? Or should that be a G?