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

I had the 1985 best-of on cassette in high school and liked about half of it. I also owned Trust, King of America and Blood & Chocolate, but haven't paid attention to anything he's done in the last 30 years.

https://www.discogs.com/Elvis-Costello-And-The-Attractions-The-Best-Of-Elvis-Costello-And-The-Attractions/release/3543966

Not a band, but I think this fits: I can't seem to get into Brazilian music. I keep buying Caetano Veloso, Gal Costa, Tom Ze, Jorge Ben, and Gilberto Gil records; I've read Tropical Truth, and own all the Os Mutantes reissues and a few Rita Lee albums; I like the political aspects of the music, the individual stories and personalities, even some of the sounds, but the music as a whole rarely makes any great impression on me. I think I just find a lot of it too lightweight and happy or something; too twee. Or maybe it's because the so-called "psychedelic" aspects of this music have been greatly exaggerated and oversold. I don't know.

what jorge ben are you listening to because i kinda want to fight you in real life

Paul Ponzi OTM too! WTF? Though, Jorge Ben is pretty good tbf.

psychedelic? i like 70s smooth jazz brazil, funky brazil.

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

jorge ben has so many great songs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YspHjaITtJ4

Try Nacão Zumbi. Brazilian music from Recife has balls; it's not that fluffy curtains-in-the-breeze shit you hear from Rio.

Os Mutantes were amazing!

and they seem very distinct from other late 20th Century Brazilian music

but haven't paid attention to anything he's done in the last 30 years.

Looking away from me, trying not to catch my eyes

I get you Paul Ponzi, actually... Caetano in particular is somebody I admire but don't want to listen to, and Os Mutantes never made an emotional impact. That said, and it's totally comfort food music, but I listen to Joao Gilberto Voz E Violao at least once a month

can you hum the melody to the chorus of oliver's army? yes you can

idk i've had it stuck in my head for over a decade

oliver's army also has one of costello's best writerly tricks, when the song secretly modulates up a whole step during the bridge, but you don't notice it until the verse comes back.

The Jorge Ben album I have is this one:
https://www.discogs.com/Jorge-Ben-Ben-Samba-Bom/master/256717

and some various songs on compilations and mixes (a friend of mine--a bassist--is crazy about his stuff and used to burn CDs for me).

Try Nacão Zumbi. Brazilian music from Recife has balls; it's not that fluffy curtains-in-the-breeze shit you hear from Rio.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Monday, April 29, 2019 8:30 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I will check them out. and yes, "fluffy curtains in the breeze shit" is a very otm description of my issues with a lot of this music

Hüsker Dü.

Oliver's Army just came on the radio in our office and quite a few people were humming along, so clearly not 'totally forgettable' for everyone (I couldn't precisely tell, but it sounded like they muffled the n-bomb but left "London is full of Arabs' intact).

having been raised with a cassette of Joe Jackson's I'm The Man on the flipside to a Costello best-of, I have to say, Jackson was much preferred

I also, as a child, had a genuine terror of Oliver's Army. while recognising it as a good song, I had to run away from the room whenever I heard it. not sure why. think it might have been those hyperrealised high piano lines

I once listened to This Year's Model and have since repressed all residual memories of it. A few minutes ago, I decided to give 'Oliver's Army' a chance and now deeply resent the baiters itt.

Agreed about the Brazilian hipster heavyweights of yore. I'll stick to the mind-bogglingly prolific (and inconsistent) Heitor Villa-Lobos, thank you very much.

y'all bum me out. the attractions are a kick ass band

more elvis for us, brad

"Etude 11" from Villa-Lobos's Douze études is my favourite thing to play. I do enjoy the Tropicalia: Ou Panis et Circensis comp, though. Do you guys not like bossa nova too?

I love his Etudes. And I generally enjoy bossa nova.

XP: The Jorge Ben album that made a convert out of me was Forca Bruta. He was in the zone on that one.
(although if your complaint is that brazilian music is too happy, not sure that one is gonna turn you)

i like all the brazilian stuff people are complaining about itt

i used to have difficulties to get into bossanova. but this has changed. i love the smoothness and the flow of it. and i also like that it is so unobtrusive. it has got an ambient quality. and it definitely radiates positive vibrations. listening more thoroughly to the classic getz/gilberto album made me a convert.

I love Jorge Ben's '69 album and Gal Costa's India. Both have great album covers, too.

Devin Townsend. Tried again with all the buzz around Empath, but I gotta accept that dude is just not for me. I appreciate his singular, ambitions vision, but I just find the results to be overly dense cheese fests with flashes of great guitar playing.

Tracks like 'Spirits Will Collide' make me yearn for the irony era.

jon your description of the music is otm so i can't blame you for not getting into it

I'd totally cite him in a 'music that requires more suspension of disbelief than you can muster' thread.

hey my man i just enjoy things that are awesome, in fact i would suggest there is far less distance and interference between me and my earnest enjoyment of devin townsend's music than you wishing for a new age of irony bc it embarrasses you, thanks

That's alright, I totally hear why someone would get mileage out of his arena-ready sound, but this thread kind of duplicates the musical controp thread so… (I don't actually miss the age of irony btw, assuming it ever existed.)

I liked Strapping Young Lad a lot - had all the albums, saw them live twice. I do not like Devin Townsend's post-SYL music at all.

but haven't paid attention to anything he's done in the last 30 years.

tbf that only brings us back to 1989, which means (looks at discography) maaaaaybe three or four albums worth hearing but still (looks back at discography) 10 pretty imo great albums before that (if you like him at all), and that doesn't include the b-sides collections.

Husker Du: one of my all-time faves, but I understand.

Brazilian stuff: there are so many artists under that Tropicalia umbrella, and so many albums over so many eras, that there's bound to be stuff you like. Tom Ze is sure a lot of fun. Maybe move ahead from the '60s to the late '80s and early '90s, and some of the Luaka Bop or Nonesuch stuff?

Boards of Canada. They've got one tune that everyone likes, including me, and the rest is just this in-one-ear-out-the-other bland mush of no tunes, no basslines and indifferent, and frequently pointless, beats - with no really interesting sounds or textures to boot. Plus I don't get this nostalgia for childhood thing that gets talked up - I'm not sure what it is I'm supposed to be hearing but I don't get it. By the way, I don't hate them by any means, I can listen to them but that's because, like most people, I don't mind listening to undemanding, featureless music occasionally.

Cosign on BoC, I said the more or less the same thing upthread:

Boards of Canada. I love the idea of all this occult stuff lurking in their music, but when I actually listen to it all I hear is pleasant, drifty ambience.

― my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Friday, 8 November 2013 13:47 (five years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah I dig the woozy tape ambience stuff they do but this is the age of vaporwave and Orange Milk type stuff and tbh I think a lot of those guys do it better. takes more than a decaying synth tone to turn me on right now

Boards of Canada. I love the idea of all this occult stuff lurking in their music, but when I actually listen to it all I hear is pleasant, drifty ambience.

try again i'd say you haven't tried hard enough.

do you find this tactic usually works

to be clear my real issue is that you didn't point them to Alpha and Omega

You don't have to like them. You're wrong, but it's ok.

Nlogax owns

Aquarius owns

the interludes on maxima and mhtrtc rule

to me mpb isn't so much "psychedelic", it has a lot in common with smooth soul. and i love smooth soul.

I've heard Eno's "Music For Films", I'm not sure why BoC's interludes should impress me.

Tomorrow's Harvest is secretly the best Boards LP

fuck the hype, that one will convert you

would be curious to know rough ages of those for whom the nostalgia of BoC’s earlier work doesn’t resonate. Especially anybody who prefers the 90s nostalgia of vaporwave. For children of the late 70s who watched a certain type of public television, educational film, nature documentary, it should resonate immediately. When I first heard BoC (I think it was the song Aquarius), it hit me immediately - and it came out of nowhere. It tapped into an atmosphere I’d forgotten but was so familiar. It was like the pivotal moment with the food critic in the movie Ratatouille. I don’t listen to them a lot these days, and when I do it’s Tomorrow’s Harvest, but I’ll love MHTRTC forever for the feelings and mood it evoked when I had it on constant rotation.