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

yeah i haven't paid much attn to anything after the Superwolf record. i picked up a couple post -'06 CDs used and listened to them on a car ride from nashville to atlanta. once each. haven't felt compelled to dig them out again.

saw him live in like 2015 though and it was a really fantastic show. would recommend.

also, Godwin's Law has basically become its own Godwin's Law around here. I never hear this term anywhere other than ILX

The song “Lay and Love” (from The Letting Go LP and also a CD single with a few great Dylan covers) is a song I liked so much that I bugged other ppl to listen to it...

That was 2006. Any since then?

I don’t keep up with his output, so not one to ask.

His tracks were the standout on that otherwise hella-dull 2CD set of Dead/JGB covers a year or so back – that’s obviously not an example of his own songwriting, tho.

I also like his “Summer in the Southeast” live album a good deal.

I'm with sleeve. Felt is wasted on me.

xp
A lot of Will’s stuff from the past decade (glancing back at his discography) seems to be either collaborative; live or reworked versions of his own material; or covering other artists. Even my pal who’s a big BBP fan has sort of lost track.

*BPB

late to the Miles Davis party here but Kind of Blue was my entry point and wakeup call w/Miles (via that crappy Columbia reissue w/the cover photo of Miles clearly playing live sometime in the '70s.) Clicked with me immediately.

But at the same time, I don't know that it was so much the fact that *this* was the only album that would have done it, that would have turned me on to jazz, as much as it was the first one I got to. I picked up Workin' With the Miles Davis Quintet and 'Round About Midnight around the same time, and those are both beautiful, spine-tinglingly classic jazz albums in their own right. the version of "It Never Entered My Mind" on Workin' remains maybe my favorite Miles track.

After Miles it was Dexter Gordon and John Coltrane and then on from there.

When you say you love I See A Darkness, I take it you mean the song and not the album?

The album! I like the whole album. I've listened to tons of his stuff, from Palace Brothers on, starting back at his/their/its inception (queue up "I was there ...") but even the stuff that I liked while it was playing, like Master and Everyone and The Letting Go and Lie Down in the Light (iirc) and Beware, I've almost never gone back to a second time, or at least not with any regularity. With the exception of I See a Darkness. I even love that album's cover. "Death to Everyone" might be my favorite song on it. It's like dub-folk-rock.

Saying that, I just put on The Letting Go and shit like The Seedling sounds pretty great, so who knows.

I totally get why people connect so deeply with Radiohead, but likewise there's something about Yorke's warble and brainy musings that push me away. Greenwood's soundtrack work confirms that I like the bones of their approach, just not the finished product.

^ Pretty much exactly this.

i know i'm alone here, but

minutemen

i have been listening to them quite a bit due to every single song they ever wrote being nominated on the <2 minutes poll. usually with legendary bands i don't get, there's at least one song that i can grab a hold of, and over time i find my way into the rest of their catalog. not so with minutemen. i remember excitedly ordering double nickels after first reading about them in azerrad's book, along with husker du and some butthole surfers and all sorts of stuff. and just kind of listening to it with a frowny face. i haven't smiled since then. it's been 18 years.

i definitely respect their role as underground pioneers, mapping out the network of diy spaces and tiny dank venues across the country, paving the road for other bands. maybe some day i'll figure it out, but their whole style of singing and playing doesn't gel with me. even the drumming (and i usually enjoy drumming of all sorts, from sloppy to razor sharp, repetitive techno to free jazz) just reminds me of 11th grade jams

along with husker du and some butthole surfers and all sorts of stuff. and just kind of listening to it with a frowny face.

just to clarify, i didn't make the frowny face with husker du and the buttholes, just minutemen

I’m not into Minutemen either. But most ‘80s bands like that aren’t my jam. Never got into Hüsker Dü either (and have tried).

see, Husker Du i grew to like, especially after i played them loud on a stereo and pumped up the bass a bit (the CDs i bought back in the day had no low end).

this is probably going to annoy fans of one or both bands, but, i have to say it: when i listen to minutemen i get this odd nagging sensation that reminds me of when i have to listen to Red Hot Chili Peppers

well I'm pretty sure Flea was a fan before RHCP was a thing, so that seems fair (see also: Big Boys)

I love them, of course

I'm 100% with you on Minutemen. a few songs aside, they do nothing for me. I do love D Boon's playing & guitar sound, but Double Nickels is such a slog for me, I could never get into it. same with the Replacements. I tried all the bands even tangentially related to Hüsker Dü and got nowhere.

Yup, pretty much the same baffled reaction to Minutemen and (in particular) The Replacements. Living in the UK, I always wondered if there were some US cultural references that I was missing out on with both bands, whereas Hüsker Dü made sense to a UK audience immediately.

I’m the complete opposite. I dig how singular minutemen are but husker du has always felt to me like a relatively conventional shouty rock/punk band that just wasn’t particularly good. I don’t hate em or anything but they’ve never really clicked for me either.

I think I'm a sucker for bands with short songs - even when I'm not super into the band (like the Minutemen), I feel like it's really easy to listen to an album of 2-minute songs. obv I am very excited about the poll

For a while it was the Boredoms, but now I just like them! Sonic Youth have taken their place.

― Vinnie, Monday, July 9, 2007

I don't remember posting this at all, but coincidentally I listened to Sister for the first time a couple days ago and it sounded great. definitely plan to give it more listens and I hope this becomes my gateway to appreciating SY

I'm sure you'll be flooded with advice, but if Sister sounds good to you, think about heading to Evol next, rather than skipping straight to Daydream Nation.

i'd go for dirty. short songs which kick ass. my first full sy album and still my fave.

Daydream Nation was the one I tried to get into years before, and it was intriguing but impenetrable for me. Yeah I'll try Evol next if it's similar to Sister, but Dirty sounds like it might be up my alley even more

Murray Street was my gateway in, after trying unsuccessfully with Daydream Nation.

to my everlasting shame, dirty and goo are the only two sonic youth albums i've never been that into. it's a good reminder to give them another shot though, since it's been a while

Neither is very good IMHO. Those are also the two albums where it feels like they’re trying the hardest to make a big splash in the alternative rock scene of the moment.

fIREHOSE is easy to like, but I'm with y'all on Minutemen. It's all too... something. Frenzied, I guess?

jfc

Sister, Goo and Rather Ripped are the SY tentpoles for me. All the other albums bang around between mildly appealing to OMG MAKE IT STOP.

I like all of them.

the two albums where it feels like they’re trying the hardest to make a big splash in the alternative rock scene of the moment.

I could maybe understand this position wrt Dirty (although it seemed pretty radical to me as a teenager and a fan of Soundgarden/Smashing Pumpkins) but I honestly don't really know what people mean when they say this about Goo, which was released a year before Nevermind. (These were Billboard's top 'alternative songs' for 1990, for comparison: https://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1990/alternative-songs)

For me Sonic Youth starts being good on Bad Moon Rising and stops being good after Goo. Sister is their best album IMO. I saw them live supporting Goo, but it was when they were opening for Neil Young & Crazy Horse, so not the best context for them, really.

Sund4r — it is exactly that pre-Nevermind moment that I’m talking about! Everything from the cover art, to the Chuck D cameo, to the song about Karen Carpenter... even at the time, it felt like a really “try-hard” LP. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, and it does have a few good songs (as does Dirty, which was obv. the big grunge/Butch Vig move).

FWIW (if anyone cares) — when I did a big SY catalog (re-)visit last year, as documented on another thread, I think my favorites ended up being EVOL, Experimental Jet Set..., NYC Ghosts, Murray St., and Rather Ripped.

I guess I agree if the point is that they and Geffen were hoping for a breakthrough with their first DGC album. (Iirc, there was a quote in Goodbye 20th Century about how Geffen hoped for them to become the Pink Floyd of the 90s?) I don't see those things as much of a play for the Cure/REM/Midnight Oil/Concrete Blonde 'alternative' market of 1990, though (with the caveat that I turned 11 in 1990 so).

I've said this before but Rain on Tin is the best SY song because Thurston only sings for like 30 seconds and then it's just 8 minutes of guitar harmony heaven. Murray Street is the best.

I agree they weren’t trying to be Midnight Oil. (FWIW, “Kool Thing” was a moderate Modern Rock hit.)

My favourite SY album is Ciccone Youth but that’s just me. I listen to s/t and Confusion/Kill more than any other of their albums.

I like Sister fine and “Teenage Riot” is amazing. Jet Set is amazing. I found they really picked up toward the end and I really enjoy Nurse and Rather Ripped

I don’t know what to make of their golden era I guess. “Diamond Sea” does little for me

I don't like The Whitey Album that much tbh but I guess I get off on a technicality there, since it's a Ciccone Youth album.

Ryan Adams and his assorted projects were a big one for me, as I like my alt country/c&w/Americana. But I'm more than happy to shelve all that now. And yes I have tried to get into him before, but it never stuck.

The only problem I have with the Minutemen is that Double Nickels kind of towers over the rest of their catalogue but on the subject of the short songs poll, I've got to admit that They Might Be Giants is one of these bands for me. I do love 'Birdhouse' and 'Ana Ng' but haven't been able to get into anything else I've heard (I've tried with Flood and even owned Lincoln at one point).

I like the Minutemen a lot but I don't think I've ever listened to double nickels on the dime from start to finish. It's just too much, even though almost all of it is very good. I've only ever owned it on CD, but I suspect that this is an album that benefited from the vinyl format where you would only listen to one of the four sides at a time.

and then you get the engine noise locked groove at the end and you'd just leave that running for a while

I like Double Nickels a lot but I'm kinda surprised to see it show up on so many all-time lists tbh

It's only 80 minutes long. I used to listen to it on cassette, and had it so thoroughly memorized that when I heard the CD (which cuts three songs) it was effectively ruined for me. (And the CD version is the version that's on Spotify and available for download - if you want the full track listing now, you have to buy the vinyl.)

The RIP Malk Hollis thread just reminded me of all my unsuccessful attempts to get into Talk Talk... maybe this will bring their later catalog into focus for me.

I'm in the same boat. Recently sold a Talk Talk compilation, too.

Same here. Haven't tried very hard though.

my bloody valentine