pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

When will we get a Better Than Ezra reevaluation

― Chappies banging dustbin lids together (President Keyes), Sunday, January 23, 2022 3:59 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

About 10 years ago, I worked with a woman who was a Better Than Ezra superfan, with deep knowledge of their entire catalog. IIRC, she thought "Good" was fine and all, but held up an album from like 2005 as an unappreciated masterpiece.

that's weird but to me very similar to manic street preachers fans in the 2000s

i.e. the true meaning of la tristessa

i identify as a manics fan in the 2000s

I know a guy who told me his favorite band of all time is Dada

and his hair was perfect

https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/8104-lateralus/

not entirely sure what whiney's point about tool no longer being cool was supposed to be about

I know a guy who told me his favorite band of all time is Dada

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Sunday, January 23, 2022 7:54 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i had an acquaintance in college who was an eve 6 superfan. i know a girl who liked nada surf enough that she very likely cheated on her longtime partner with the nada surf guy. but this is something else.

he said I'm going to my favorite band and I asked and he said...took me a second to register Dada and then I said "oh yeah Dizz Knee Land" and he was like "Well they have a lot better sings than that" like he was a little offended

cheating with the nada surf guy is pretty wild though

they listened to Blonde on Blonde on a portable stereo

In response to upthread, fuck that tastemaker bullshit, Moby's Play and Everything Is Wrong are great albums, along with at least a dozen other tracks. He may be an obnoxious creep but he did some great shit.

then I said "oh yeah Dizz Knee Land" and he was like "Well they have a lot better sings than that" like he was a little offended

As if they’re R.E.M. and you said “Shiny Happy People,” ha ha

The only thing I remember about Better Than Ezra is when I see anything about the town in Michigan name Owosso I hear "and it's good, living in OWOSSO" in my head.

lol

My favorite thing about them is that they inspired this hilariously stupid joke:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zjr9hh9ZIM

Seeing JSBX live was among my favorite concert experiences of the 90s

I saw them playing to next-to-nobody at a festival in 2015 and it was crazy crazy good

what once-cool bands from the late-90s do you think are not cool today?

Elephant Six bands

I never thought anyone ever thought E6 was cool but maybe I was the perfectly-wrong age... people older than me liked Beulah (did they?) and people younger than me liked the cabaret era pre-Fauna of Montreal

also no I saw JSBX in 2010 not 2015

I would say a lot of folks thought Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control were cool. And there was def a cult for Apples in Stereo.

In fact I'm now getting serious flashbacks to every issue of Big Takeover in the late 90s.

I think My Morning Jacket's cover of "Rocket Man" made it to every mix CD ever made in my extended social circle ca. 2000. I don't think Elton John covers recorded in empty silos are cool any more

I saw JSBX in 2003 with the Black Keys opening and vividly remember thinking about the Black Keys "christ that was bad and lame, I'm sure that's the last I'll ever hear of them."

nmh reunion show still one of the best i've ever seen

I think I completely unplugged from most rock-pop music from 1998 to 2003 or so, I haven't listened to virtually any of these bands except accidentally

TBF i was couch surfing through a good chunk of that time and didn't own a computer or much more than a discman so there were reasons

So the phrase “It’s been awhile” means nothing to you?

if i say "cut my life into pieces", what do you think?

i genuinely don't know if you two are fucking with me or not

though google informs me you are not!

no, i have never listened intentionally or to my memory to either papa roach or staind. I am aware they exist! that's about it.

At one point I was Alternative Press's token nu-metal dude, so I interviewed the dude from Staind and the dude from Papa Roach. I have not listened to either of those records since prepping for those interviews.

I was hanging by a moment until unperson revived this thread.

Dunno who Jesse Dorris is but he's really good at writing about techno. Really enjoyed his Shinichi Atobe review today.

Re: E6… NMH is embarrassing now, to me. Olivia Tremor Control are nice acid music.

But the best E6 record is the first Elf Power record, which is a blown-out lo-fi nihilistic masterpiece

Will cosign.

shrug, i liked beulah. saw one of their last ever shows at the fillmore and they rocked. played my request in the second encore shouted from the balcony. i still think yoko is a great record (though that was post-elephant 6 for them).

The first Circulatory System record is really the thing.

Yeah I liked them too, those Beulah records hold up fine imo. Agree w/table about NMH. Looking back now, it’s almost beyond belief for me that there was a time when Aeroplane was commonly discussed as being one of the greatest records ever. It feels like that took place in some kind of alternate dimension.

the nmh fandom was (is?) extremely embarrassing but itaots is still a good album, just not a greatest of all time masterpiece or anything. i still love the two otc albums, dusk at cubist castle is a real favourite of mine.

I saw the E6 people where all the members of a bunch of diff bands toured together and played songs from otc elf power circulatory system etc. They played for a long fucking time, great show, it would be impossible for me to listen to nmh now, I prob need to get over myself about it but that's the way it is

I forgot about that tour - I left after 2hrs and heard they went on for another 2+.

More like Elephant 6 hours am I right?

I like the first nmh album, it’s lofi and weird. I’ve no use for the other one.

dusk at cubist castle is a masterpiece

I revisited Dusk earlier today (per this discussion) - the only one of these I've ever owned. It is still v good, even if not quite my style. (Also tried some of the others, but they didn't hit me the same way... I'll check out the first NMH album)

Bealuh was probably the most conventional indie rock band of the lot but they were very good pop songwriters

Aeroplane is great. Feel like there is an impulse to take it down a notch because it has been considered such an untouchable indie classic and if that weren't the case nobody would be making a point to say it is worse than all the other albums being discussed. That being said OTC is still incredible and Circulatory System is great still as well. Not aged at all imo. The Gerbils are cool too.

I never understood the love for NMH or that album. Always makes me want to listen to Tiny Tim instead, who actually sounds fun.

The only cool Elephant6 band is Of Montreal.

glad you said it, moka. the deification of that stuff always seemed like an ironic joke that went too far.

Another band who took quite the fall from grace are Bloc Party. Every zine seemed to love Silent Alarm and judging by their current single they’re so lame nowadays.

never got the hype around them, either.

shocking, i know.

Another band who took quite the fall from grace are Bloc Party. Every zine seemed to love Silent Alarm and judging by their current single they’re so lame nowadays.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka), Friday, January 28, 2022 10:19 PM (five minutes ago)

i mean, that album came out 17 years ago. lol.

they also had a pretty rapid and steep decline in quality though, their third album, intimacy, was only three years after silent alarm and it had some real garbage on it.

of montreal occasionally had tunes but barnes' schtick is so deeply embarrassing it's ridiculous to hold them up as the only cool e6 band