Post a controversial music opinion

the 10K twins are fine, it's nothing against them. really.

but cocteau twins are so much better

It's odd, the total banality of Merchant's solo material only made me like 10,000 Maniacs more. I can't think of them in the same world as Cocteau Twins because CT are functional (they work at dinner parties and on mixes) and 10,000 Maniacs are a very private personal enjoyment, for me

10k maniacs is indeed good. I like Merchant’s homemade accent.

tigerlily is a solid album

Her accent may be my biggest barrier to enjoying them

They feel very weirdly like a band I have always been aware of but have no connection to whatsoever. I remember their existence in the 80s, when I was a kid and thought they had an interesting name but knew no one who listened to them. I hear them once in a while and never feel much. What accent does Merchant have? Isn't she from around Buffalo? There's a definite Buffalo/Rochester accent I'm v familiar with but I don't recall her vowels reminding me of it.

I'm not just being an asshole, although I'm definitely being that. It actually sort of intrigues me how disconnected I feel from them.

The only thing I remember about them is their MTV Unplugged cover of 'Because the Night'.

I never thought of it as an accent so much as an affected quirk

i spent a post drunk evening listening to the Maniacs last week, when they was good they was very very good

Oh, I thought that was solo Merchant but apparently it was the whole band.xps

It’s hard to sing along with! (for me)

I think it's probably fairly objectively difficult, although actual singers could say more - in addition to tracking those tricky changes, in the verse, the singer mostly sings the chordal 7th over the ii chord (i.e. Gb over Abm7), which then resolves UP to Ab when the harmony moves to the V chord (Db) - the standard thing is for the seventh to resolve downwards. The "darling" just before "reach out" is a chordal 9th. And in the chorus, after hearing a bar of Eb (with G as the third), he has to sing Gbs in the next bar, when the harmony becomes Ebm. However, I also agree with the people who are saying that this is not a typical Motown songs and a lot of the big hits like "Tracks of My Tears", "My Girl", "You Can't Hurry Love", etc are more straightforward.

I always think 10k Maniacs want you to feel rooted in reality, whereas the Cocteaus want to escape reality. The former have some decent early material, the latter are obviously great, I don't think it makes sense to compare them when they're trying to do very different things.

Cocteau Twins are a swaying-in-place band; 10,000 Maniacs are a twirling-in-circles band.

10,000 Maniacs fucking rule, but they're no Cocteau Twins.

Appreciate the analysis Sund4r!

I think another part of what turns me off about some of these is their famous use of the echo chamber. I know lots of people love it, but to me it kind of makes some tracks sound like they were recorded in an airplane hanger!

10K Maniacs are very much songs about things, yeah, which i'd never think of the Cocteaus about. love both, never connected them in my head

Natalie Merchant makes sure the thesis statement is abundantly clear

Early Maniacs are best Maniacs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A3wbwChijc

🤮

The Grateful Dead had no discipline so they squandered away and sold their musicianship and talent short.

— Jerry Saltz (@jerrysaltz) December 4, 2020

Agree they had no discipline. But that was, like, part of the trip, man.

idk if "squandered" is really the right word. sure, maybe you don't like their music, but they still probably are the most successful american rock band of all time, in their own way.

Man there are plenty of absolutely valid criticisms to lob at the Dead, but I think "no discipline" is... incorrect, at least in their early years. The practiced and played out constantly, which is absolutely one level of discipline.

I'm open to anti-Dead hot takes just to counter act the current hipster Deadhead phenomenon

10k Maniacs are from Jamestown NY which is not far from Buffalo, certainly a lake erie/western new york thing going on with Merchant's accent but with a definite seasoning that is, uh, all her own

xxp I was gonna say the same thing. It’s not like they sat around on their butts, they worked all the time.

Yeah, the Grateful Dead busted their asses to be that terrible.

"The acid tests were great because sometimes we were too stoned to play, so we didn't have to."— Mr. Garcia, MD

(that's "Master of Discipline")

I like the Dead. They're amazing. But, uhh.

Natalie Merchant wrote one truly great song, imo, which is "Verdi Cries." I'm not sure how she did it.

Was assuming he meant musical discipline not work ethic wrt the Dead?

What is "musical discipline"?

jerry saltz knows all about it

anyway it's funny to me that i posted that and this thread is now talking about it and i'm going down a natalie merchant rabbit hole instead

i guess in a certain sense wringing 20 minutes out of "good lovin" takes discipline, versus just moving on to a different song

does it?

who is jerry saltz, anyway? is he some kind of music crit skip bayless?

Natalie Merchant wrote one truly great song, imo, which is "Verdi Cries." I'm not sure how she did it.
I didn't know that song, but I kind of liked "Like the Weather." It's probably the only song they've done that I'd enjoy listening to again.

xp He looks like a parody of an art critic, though I guess he's a real one.

like the weather is a real nice slice o' college rock

i'm envisioning an alternate universe where bob and jerry are super disciplined first call LA session dudes in the 70s and 80s wearing t shirts and baggy suits

https://i2.wp.com/liveforlivemusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/grateful-dead-letterman-1987.png?resize=740%2C389&ssl=1

"Ah, well, shit Jer.. we gotta hit the sack, early call tomorrow for that Toto record."

that's my new favorite thing that has ever happened on this forum

I love the dead but really don’t get the hipster dead revival... is it all ironic like when hipsters got into metal or whatever? *ducks incoming cabbage*

I guess I once never thought chambray shirts would look cool, anything’s possible

I love the dead but really don’t get the hipster dead revival... is it all ironic like when hipsters got into metal or whatever? *ducks incoming cabbage*

― brimstead, Friday, December 4, 2020 5:43 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Hipsters grew out of irony a long time ago. Un-ironic embrace of all things that at one point were deemed cheesy is the new hipster lifeblood.

post-irony

I hear we're now in the age of post-post-irony.

Many xps (and any Wilco-phobes, don't let that put you off)

Natalie in excelsis.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mUmTMvNWyo

To answer the Grateful Dead revival question: growing up, all we knew was "Touch of Grey", which is fine when you're eight or nine. But that was all we knew. When I actually went and tracked down Live/Dead and American Beauty in my mid-late 20s, it was just very solid classic rock. I genuinely didn't understand the bad reputation that the Dead had accumulated in retrospect. I guess it wasn't very cool music in the time of Nirvana and Weezer, but when we actually sat down with their classic late 60s / early 70s albums, I was genuinely confused as to where the bad reputation stemmed from. I recall a coworker at the used record store where we worked acting genuinely surprised that a person our age would be into that music, but to me it was like, well. . . if you like stuff like Pink Floyd and Neil Young —y'know, typical classic rock favorites— there's zero reason that you shouldn't be able to find similar things to like about the Dead.

It's funny that you bring up Wilco, Chinaski. They were my roundabout gateway into the Dead. We were listening to Yankee Hotel Foxtrot in my car around the time it was new while giving a different coworker a ride home and he was a guy who knew pretty much everything there is to know about classic rock and he said, in a very genuine way, "What Dead album is this? I don't recognize it." And that piqued my curiosity, so I checked out Workingman's Dead a few days later and absolutely loved it.

Funny, i've always thought Jerry Saltz is a pretty good writer who squandred his talent on glorifying his position and pandering to the lowest common denominator.