What's the least acclaimed album you love?

thought i mentioned UB40 - Promises & Lies. A big family holiday tape. It makes me feel warm, cosy and slightly guilty for liking it

I'm also a fair fan of all the shit 70s Beach Boys albums except 15 Big Ones

If I go by RYM, whose chart lists only those items reviewed a sufficient number of times, the lowest rates album that I love is Robyn Hitchcock - Groovy Decoy. I've never understand the disgust aimed at this album.

I'm no expert on RYM but believe it historically swings (even) more rockist than AM

It tends to get a lot more fans of prog, metal, classical, and jazz, relative to most 'music criticism' outlets.

Lindstrom's Six Cups of Rebel seems mostly to confound others, but the deep dive in to circa-1980 sounds hits the mark perfectly for me. His similarly conceived collab with Todd Rundgren doesn't do a thing though.

Not sure about albums, but I do love loads of chart EDM from the last decade, and none of it seems to receive either critical acclaim or even low-key support around here. Was thinking of starting a thread on this topic at some stage, but afraid it would crash and burn.

― Camaraderie at Arms Length

Yeah it's a shame - I've always enjoyed a lot of populist/chart dance all the way from Hi-NRG and Italo days to today's EDM but as ILM gets older there's less and less enthusiasm for it. There were big discussions about UK Garage and French House circa 2001 but there's very little of that going on today.

Acclaimed Music is useful as a subset of critically acclaimed music from the pop music press, but also filters out a huge chunk of 'less accessible music' like experimental, electronic, classical, jazz and metal, which RYM does include. Anyway, it's extremely rare for albums to be highly rated on AM and low on RYM, and vice-versa.

The Books - Lost and Safe

For me it's not only their best by a wide margin (yet it gets less attention than their previous efforts "lemon of pink" and "food for thought") but it's also one of my top 5 albums of the 00's.

The Books in general are very underrated imho, almost nobody seems to remember them and it was only a decade ago that they were active. Granted they are not the sort of artists or music that drive people crazy.

ditto but for The Way Out. I remember general consensus being something like "it's ok but not as good as Lemon of Pink" which felt weird to me. on first listen it seemed to me like it was obviously their best.

I'd also throw the Zammuto albums in here, which I enjoy even more than The Books, and didn't really get any critical love at all

I wouldn't say I *love* it, but there's a couple of Crazy Frog songs on Presents Crazy Hits (which was for a while the worst rated album of all time on RYM) that improve on the originals.

xxp
Well, e.g. In the Court of the Crimson King and Red are, respectively, #6 and #40 on RYM and #113 and #591 on AM. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is #30 on RYM and #524 on AM.

I was mostly interpreting 'acclaim' to also account for the number and profile of good reviews, such that Bob Dylan gets more acclaim than Morton Feldman. (If we're looking at scholarly/specialist acclaim for 'less accessible' styles, I'm actually not sure that RYM is the best source here either.)

Kuedo - Severant

It wasn't panned or anything, just received "okay to good" marks from critics and was quickly forgotten. Personally, I feel it's an absolute classic, beautifully meshing footwork rhythms with early 80's Bladerunner/Vangelis atmospherics perfectly for the entire duration of the album. Every song is memorable and unique. The cinematic feel of it is on the level of Burial's Untrue imho. I never tire of listening to it. Things like Jlin's Dark Energy (same label, same genre) received significantly more praise for what I feel is a comparatively inferior record. Perhaps her style is more novel, but Severant's songs are more memorable.

A related category to this could be "Albums you love which the artist apparently hates" - my nomination for this would be The Auteurs vs. μ-Ziq, which has been disowned by both Luke Haines and Mike Paradinas, but which is the thing I listen to most from either of them.

^^ all three Soul Coughing albums :)

A couple of Embrace albums that everyone else hates or ignored.

Well, e.g. In the Court of the Crimson King and Red are, respectively, #6 and #40 on RYM and #113 and #591 on AM. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is #30 on RYM and #524 on AM.

How We Rock is my number one SSD album and one of my favorite albums of the 80's. always felt all alone there with that one.

haha I knew you would come through here

i have tried to think of things that were HATED/dismissed that i love and its kinda hard to think of examples. i mostly just liked a lot of stuff that was ignored and that people ended up liking later. because of my trailblazer status.

i am a terrible late-period fan though. i am happy to ignore decades of work and just listen to the 2 or 3 albums by an artist that are best.

i did enjoy that saints album someone mentioned above. they played that a lot on college radio and even mtv.

that saints album probably got a good review in rolling stone.

The Saints - All Fools Day seemed pretty well regarded from what I remember. So was Big Time, it's just hard to find these days. Even harder to find is the movie it came from.

I have many that no one cares about, but this one seems to draw plenty of ire - Razorlight - Up All Night. Once I saw Razorlight live I understood the hate. The lead singer (I forget his name) was such a punchable d-bag. But for that one album (and some good B-sides), it was an entertaining attempt to approximate Richard Hell-era Television and Patti Smith.

absolutely love the God Bless Tiny Tim album but i think that is well-regarded. i listened to the first Presidents of the United States recently and it was still amazing. i think most people see them as a joke but imo they have really good Everly Bros-style close harmonies and the use of only a few strings per instrument is an intriguing, minimalist version of pop punk. but with a 60s surf rock/psychedelic/garage influence. via the 90s. damn i love POTUSA.

i felt bad when i went on a wire thread and people were talking about how they liked the new album and i listened to it and went uhhhhhhhhh wire fans are really nice to wire....

whereas i am happy with 2nd album, 3rd album, kidney bingos once a year, ahead once a year, big black's heartbeat cover once a year and everything that colin did in the 80's. but, you know, they changed my life.

if only Green Day and POTUSA's careers had switched places. we would have Shia Lebouf doing "Peaches" on Broadway.

Just remembered, I think Worlds Apart destroyed Trail of Dead's chances of having any lasting (relatively) mainstream success and/or indie cred but I love that record lol

think it's been largely rehabilitated tbh

i listened to the first Presidents of the United States recently and it was still amazing. i think most people see them as a joke but imo they have really good Everly Bros-style close harmonies and the use of only a few strings per instrument is an intriguing, minimalist version of pop punk. but with a 60s surf rock/psychedelic/garage influence. via the 90s. damn i love POTUSA.

yea I've not encountered another album that sounds quite like that. the other day "Boll Weevil" came up on shuffle and I remember being kind of floored by it, it sounded great. they have such a strange tuning, which I think is because they never really knew how to play.

shame they only really got their 15 minutes. their later albums aren't quite as good though I really do like Freaked Out & Small, which I think is a good candidate for this thread. I was a pretty big fan of the band and I had no idea the album existed until years later when I stumbled upon it in a used CD shop. I thought it was a bootleg at first. There were almost no reviews and the ones that came out were mostly like "these guys used to be fun". But it's great, track-for-track even better than the first album, IMHO of course

I'll also mention the first three Starcastle albums here - that band took a pounding critically, and for good reason really, but I can't help but grin all the way through those records.

haha a friend of mine recently turned me on to those albums, Styx-lite but in a good way!

there seems to be something about film scores which are not acclaimed by the fans. i both like yo la tengo's quite meditative "they shoot, we score" and sonic youth "made in usa" quite a bit. they both fetch ratings around 2.8-2.9 at rateyourmusic. not my fave albums by two of my fave bands but by no stretch bad and a very nice change from their other albums.

Limp Bizkit's imperial phase is pretty much undeniable

I'm a big fan of White Zombie's Astro-Creep 2000, which was pretty popular at the time I guess, but I don't think it was critically acclaimed much.

One of my favorite bands is a relatively unknown from the mid 90s called milf so I can imagine that deterring people who might love them otherwise.

absolutely love the God Bless Tiny Tim album but i think that is well-regarded.

Of course it is, it's a classic.

someone mentioned fiery furnace brother album above and it reminded me that last week in the car rufus put on a later FF album and i had a mental mantra in my head of *i still like blueberry boat i still like blueberry boat*. it was driving me up a wall. a car wall. a door, really. driving me up a door.

you were both a passenger and the driver

remembered Razorlight as complete Kings of Leon shite, so pleasantly surprised to put on the album on Spotify and find the Television comparison not wholly off

I'm a little surprised Cardiacs haven't been mentioned yet.

Heh, you might have heard Razorlight's self-titled second album the first time. While most of Up All Night is pretty meandering, "Golden Touch" is a genuinely great song.

No-one loves them, they don't care (xp)

Leonard Cohen - Death of a Ladies' Man. I unironically think it's his best album.

The Books - Lost and Safe

For me it's not only their best by a wide margin...

I agree with this 100%

i can't make it through an entire Cardiacs song let alone an album. i don't know how people do it. i've tried on the youtube before. i've never made it through an entire zappa album either though. and i've never mustered up the courage to listen to an oingo boingo album or a mr. bungle album.

how many people are listening to oingo boingo in the world right now? i'd love to know. 6 people? more than 6?

There was a point in my life when Oingo Boingo was my favorite band. In my defense I was a high schooler in LA and they were pretty good live. Haven't listened to them in years, but perhaps Elfman's later career suggests there was more to them compositionally than they got credit for. That's all I got.

Leonard Cohen - Death of a Ladies' Man. I unironically think it's his best album.

I think this too (high five) and was thinking of posting it but I wasn't sure if ppl would complain that it actually *is* acclaimed or something. Among Leonard Cohen diehards it doesn't seem especially well-regarded. I think it's amazing.

how many people are listening to oingo boingo in the world right now? i'd love to know. 6 people? more than 6?

wtf is this shit just in the air these days? chaki tweeted yesterday about how Riotfest should get OB to reunite (lol) and then I woke up this morning with "Private Life" in my head. I don't even like this fucking band...

cardiacs have a growing and by-now considerable cult following and a not insignificant critical cachet. they have guardian articles written about them and sing to god is a bona fide rym nerd rite of passage. compared to all the bands or albums that were critically loathed AND then forgotten they've got it good imo (and their stock will continue to rise)

i see this thread as more for stuff each of us will end up being nigh on the last/only fan of, stuff that everyone else has dismissed

DOALM is amazing.

Oingo Boingo is awesome and Elfman is a beast. before the band split he had already scored Batman, Edward Scissorhands, Pee Wee, Beetlejuice, and Forbidden Zone. in addition to songs in movies like "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and "Back to School". they were kind of the official party band of the 80s.

death of a ladies man is incredible and definitely one of the best cohen albums imo

I don't even know if it is maligned anymore, seems like it has entered "here, my dear" territory of critical flops that have since been reappraised

love - four sail (i like it so much better than forever changes)
every oingo boingo album

yeah, no offense to boingo or cardiacs fans. that frenetic circus thing is just really hard for me. which i thought of because of that fiery furnaces incident in the car.

four sail is great but it's true that it was kinda considered a dud for years. or just not listened to much. i like reel-to-real and false start too. and there was definitely a time in my life when out here was my fave love album.

i have no idea what reviews of later Love albums were like. i must have read some in old magazines at some point. should check rolling stone.