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

I still don't understand the jesus lizard apart from "here comes dudley"

― a hard dom is good to find (Edward III), Friday, November 8, 2013 1:36 PM

finally, somebody who understands my indifference to this allegedly excellent band

scott the only JL thing I have ever liked is their Chrome medley, I guess I should check out Goat.

i like the stuff they put out on 45 a lot. i like the album before Goat too. Head. wheelchair epidemic cover might be my fave, but i liked the chrome one a lot too. and the trio cover.

yeah Albini nailed it with Goat, the dirtiest fuckin' basslines EVER

the residents have eluded me so far

― lorde willin' (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, November 8, 2013 3:15 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark

same here. and I have like 12 of their albums. There's just so much plodding and wonking.

favorite love agenda track, one of the best songs of the 90s, so great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3wI7bTowIA

i like the stuff they put out on 45 a lot. i like the album before Goat too. Head. wheelchair epidemic cover might be my fave, but i liked the chrome one a lot too. and the trio cover.

― scott seward, Friday, November 8, 2013 2:00 PM (1 hour ago)

http://cs312620.vk.me/v312620264/1fdb/ljF0Tody0LE.jpg

i featured Band Of Susans in the new arrivals video i made for the store tonight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds70r8nXv_0

The sudden BoS love is making me very happy. They've held up really, really, really well. I'd pretty much kill to see a reunion show, since I was stupid about them back when they were around.

Eskimo is a good Residents album for avoiding the snidey vibes scott was talking about

The first Band of Susans album is fantastic too - the one with the blue cover and Hope Against Hope on it. I think I actually prefer it to Love Agenda. Not massively into their other records but those first too were fucking sweet.

two not too

I saw band of susans but too late, I think it was '90? they had turned into a pretty boring trad rock band. I did see poss and stenger in rhys chatham's die donnergotter group in '89, that was cool.

you should not take things you read on a message board so personally. you might end up irrationally angry about things that don't matter all that much.
--Poliopolice

they had turned into a pretty boring trad rock band

Dunno if i'd go quite as far as that, they still were capable of pulling some decent moves like check out the way they lifted this Stones riff on the start of Pardon My French, all chopped up and bouncing round the speakers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piuBe4VsaNk

residents and SCG both give me the curdled zappa vibe sometimes though. that snide thing.

I don't know, I don't get a snide vibe from the Residents at all, what is it, the vocals? Or the Zappa influence in their work?

SCG - I've had experienced problems appreciating them, though some of their stuff is great, there's just too much of it and it's too (I hate to use this word, but what can you do?) self-indulgent.

i dunno, if i think about a song like "hello skinny" its like some unholy crossroads where nerds of a certain stripe meet to sell their souls to the church of the subgenius and the loompanics catalog and its also kinda ground zero for the whole SCG aesthetic of shaggy dog too-cool-to-be-a-hippie wink and nod exotica.

Oh Christ yeah Residents except I have more sense than to keep trying in this case.

the residents as a whole i find impenetrable, irritatingly "wacky" and (yes) snide, with next to no appeal either as music or sound. and i do keep trying, again (as with the afghan whigs) because several of my friends are dedicated fans.

that said, they do have their moments, and "hello skinny" is certainly one of them. their early years, from the mid-70s up through the commercial album in 1980, produced a lot of respectable work. as ed3 suggested, they didn't navigate the switch from kitchen-sink experimental weirdness to synth-based song composition terribly well. though i'm not a fan of their 80s albums, i don't think they completely lost the plot until 88's god in three persons -- not coincidentally the point at which snakefinger matriculated and his survivors went completely digital.

eskimo is a great entry point. psychedelic soundscapes, warmer and more inviting than anything else in their catalog. would also recommend meet the residents and duck stab/buster & glenn. not pop or rock, nerdy smirks very much in evidence, but the latter is surprisingly accessible, even catchy.

I've never really dug into the Residents much, but for me they're forever awesome just for their cover of Satisfaction, which is possibly the most amazing piece of music ever released.

third reich 'n' roll is classik. and kinda incredible. and ahead of its time. and should have been the last word on ironic indie rock cover songs but it really wasn't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbTIhC79UJ4

they made the world safe for pop o pies and the silicon teens and the flying lizards.

makes you why Devo even bothered really

Devo I love. Granted that Eskimo isn't anywhere near the most annoying LP of theirs... just didn't find it at all rewarding.

juiceboxxx

Felt

The Durutti Column

any This Mortal Coil album other than It'll End In Tears

Ahh man, Felt and Vini are awesome. Maybe you just haven't heard the right stuff?

For me, it's the Associates. Maybe I should give it another go though. Been about a decade since I last tried.

totally open to recommendations there! I have the Durutti 2LP "greatest hits" kinda thing and Ignite The Seven Cannons, neither of those click with me at all

re: Associates, Four Drawer Down is how I got into them, the 1st LP is too derivative of other post-punk and Sulk is far too ornate and polished for me

For the Durutti Column Greatest Hits package, are you referring to this one? That was my introduction to Vini and, while it does have many of the respective albums' highlights, after I got the proper albums, I understood it to be a lot more haphazard and inadequate than it initially appeared. I would highly recommend the Vini Reilly album from 1989. Just gorgeous music. Or the first album; can't really go wrong with that one, though it's overall sound is very sparse (which is off-putting for some people, as a good chunk of it is just solo guitar).

As for Felt, again, the first album is pretty strong. I really like it anyway, but it gets extra points from me because of the timeframe of its' release. When you think about how it was conceived and recorded throughout circa 1980 / 1981, that's pretty remarkable, considering the idea and term of "Twee" didn't become a thing for at least another three to four years. If you want a different angle, the singles compilation Stains on a Decade is pretty useful. Just single out the songs you like and check out the corresponding album.

But, I guess I should say —and this applies to both of these bands' catalogues— you will probably not find much to like if you don't like jangly guitars and borderline bad sing-talking.

Cool, will definitely check Fourth Drawer Down!

It'll End in Tears is my least favourite TMC album of the three. Feel like they were still finding their way towards the sound that only reached full flowering on the 2nd and especially 3rd LPs.

jeez that boggles my mind, 1st is an all time fave and I couldn't make it halfway through the 2nd one when I tried it out last week. I guess I should try Blood since I have never heard it, but I assumed it was similar to Filigree & Shadow.

borderline bad sing-talking

lol bingo

re: Durutti, I was referring to this 2LP comp from the 80s:

https://www.discogs.com/The-Durutti-Column-Valuable-Passages/release/84483

I stopped doing this but for the longest time it was:

The Beach Boys
Talking Heads
Cocteau Twins
Hüsker Dü
The Fall
The Orb
Stereolab
The Kinks
Liz Phair
Public Enemy
The Blue Nile

I don't hate any of them per se (well, except perhaps for the Beach Boys, due to the amount of time I wasted on Pet Sounds) or I would have moved on immediately. So while none of these rivals the baffling awfulness of, say, Elvis Costello or the Afghan Whigs, I wouldn't mind not hearing them ever again for the most part.

stevie nicks

Valuable Passages has a lot of really good early songs, but also has some kind of misguided selections ('Piece For Out of Tune Grand Piano' and the spliced up 'Without Mercy' bits are pretty questionable).

I'd definitely say check out the Vini Reilly album from 1989. Valuable Passages stops right before that period. Tony Wilson's introduction of the Akai MPC sampler to him, along with Vini's unexpected collaboration with Morrissey around the same time, really inspired a new muse and got him out of the trajectory of diminishing returns he had been on for the previous little while.

I have a "thing" about the unfortunate-ness of Pet Sounds's standing as the "canonical" Beach Boys album...

xps felt is a band where nobody really agrees on what albums are best, except maybe for forever breathes the lonely word.

my introduction to them was the absolute classic masterpieces compilation, which highlights the earlier guitar-led work. this is the album i recommend to newcomers... but it has a few songs from ignite so maybe this sound isn't your thing.

in which case i recommend the subsequent bubblegum perfume compilation. this covers the post-deebank years, where the sound becomes more wide-ranging as keyboards become more central. this is the album that turned me into a felt obsessive.

if these compilations don't do it for you then i don't think anything on their albums is going to change that.

John Martyn

I have a "thing" about the unfortunate-ness of Pet Sounds's standing as the "canonical" Beach Boys album...

― i’m still stanning (morrisp), Wednesday, June 6, 2018 4:11 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, it should be All Summer Long.

John Martyn

― Duke, Thursday, June 7, 2018 10:08 AM (thirty-one minutes ago)

Ahhh, that hurts my soul!

What have you tried?

pet sounds is fucking amazing

Pretty sure I could get into propagandhi if I tried a tad harder

listen to the instrumentals and it's blow your mind, you really hear how wild the song structures/chord changes are.

(re pet sounds)

You mean like the "Instrumental Stereo Mixes" on the 50th Anniversary Edition? OK, will listen to them now.

My feeling about the album as the "canonical" choice is that -- notwithstanding how great it may be -- if it had been my introduction to the BB, I may not have chosen to go further with them... so I wasn't surprised to hear someone saying something similar.

Tho I also got into them in a funky way, and I'm honestly not sure how I'd try to "get someone into them"...

As far as beach boys intros go smiley smile and wild honey combo deliver.

Nick Drake
Fleetwood Mac