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Post by halo19 on Jan 7, 2007 21:59:55 GMT -4
I've noticed that in the past 2-3 years, albums aren't quite as immediate as they used to be on their impact with me. And sometimes I have found that I may as well have stayed silent when voicing out my initial opinions. A few of mine...
my bloody valentine -- Loveless
A real head-scratcher at first, but now I can get into it, although I still respect it more than I enjoy it, and don't think it's quite the masterpiece that everyone says it is. Still, it has some really good highlights. "Sometimes," "When You Sleep," and "Soon" have grown to be favorites of mine. If you like noisy/dreampop stuff, it's useful. I now have Isn't Anything, and ironically, while I don't enjoy it as much, it has helped further my appreciation of this record. I mean, how many bands could say that bands ranging from the Flaming Lips to the Deftones have borrowed parts of their songs?
Modest Mouse -- This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About
It's great (on the whole), but it's such a long album you may pass out the first few times before making it to the end of this. I thought a lot of instrumental parts were great but went on too long. Not perfect, but overall, it's worth the wait.
LCD Soundsystem
There's 2 discs. One of 'em is easier to get into than the other. The second disc, the one with the singles, just tends to drag, I felt. Those tracks are all like 5-10 minutes, seriously. The 2 versions of "Yeah" total in at 15.
The Mars Volta -- Frances the Mute
The first few listens: Don't really care. Actually, this one's surprising because it's a type of album that I'd expect to hate. But I bought it mostly because of the cheap price that I found it for and enjoyed the single.
There may be a couple more but that's what comes to mind. I'm interested in what others may contribute here if they do. I just figured that since this isn't an actual chart and it has to do with popular music, I may as well post this in the pop forum.
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Post by a Nick O! on Jan 8, 2007 4:10:39 GMT -4
Interesting topic placement. Let's scan my collection:
Sh**, it took me maybe 5 times to realize how brilliant AFI were (via The Art of Drowning) and how vital they were to my music collection.
Coldplay - X&Y
Even owning burned copies of their albums and liking their singles, I didn't fully appreciate how beautiful almost every song is until way later. This year's mission will be to see if similar results happen with their first two albums.
Fall Out Boy
I basically had to force myself to learn to like them.
Hatebreed
Pantera - The Great Southern Trendkill
I appreciated Cowboys From Hell, Vulgar Display of Power and to a lesser extent, Far Beyond Driven, before Dimebag was killed. This one not so much. And certainly not Reinventing the Steel. I guess what inspired me to refresh myself with this one, one year ago, was when Bleeding Through said on their DVD that they wanted Terry Date to work on their record because they loved how this Pantera record, specifically, turned out. I'd still like to go back and see if I can even more fully appreciate albums 3, 5, 1 & 2 (in that order).
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Post by a Nick O! on Jan 8, 2007 4:13:01 GMT -4
I can also list some artists/albums I didn't seem to take to and hope they'll improve with repeated listen, though I listened to 'em enough to do album rankers...
AC/DC - Back in Black
Brian, Bon, neither one is very pleasing to the ears. And their brand of minimalist hard rock I find to be very ordinary, for the most part. "Hells Bells" sure has a killer riff, though.
At the Drive-In - Relationship of Command
I don't enjoy it as much as everyone else seems to, but moreover, I couldn't bring myself to care much about any of the songs they've done before this.
Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen
Beck
Pretty much Mutations onward, as it turns out.
Bad Brains
Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique
De La Soul - 3 Feet High and Rising
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing...
Fugazi
Led Zeppelin
LL Cool J - Mama Said Knock You Out
A Tribe Called Quest - The Low End Theory
I guess I'm just taking these for granted.
John Coltrane - Blue Train
Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
jazz
It's really hard for me to get into music where the tracks are long and mostly consist of instruments soloing (except for drum solos, since I have a general, if not good, idea of what they're doing). Now if there are notes included that outline the charts, then at least I can do my best to try and follow those. This partially explains why I hate jam bands. The other part is because I have little tolerance for hippies.
Converge(!)
Jesus Christ!
The Band - Music from Big Pink
Jeff Buckley - Grace
Built to Spill
Elastica (to all the critical extent)
David Gray - White Ladder
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Modest Mouse
Pearl Jam
The Roots
The Shins - Oh, Inverted World
Sonic Youth - Daydream Nation
Dashboard Confessional, The Get Up Kids, Taking Back Sunday, Thursday, Underoath, emo
Van Halen - 1984
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
I don't get it.
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Post by halo19 on Jan 8, 2007 18:18:05 GMT -4
I have the same problem with Paul's Boutique, actually. I don't think it's THAT good of an album, as everyone seems to think. I'd give that a 3.5/5, and I don't know if that's being generous. Pearl Jam are a band I find that others enjoy more than me. Even Ten is an album I don't enjoy to the extent of the masses.
Which stuff from Bad Brains have you acquired? All I've got so far is Rock for Light. I caught on to that one. I haven't heard much Converge but remember not really enjoying anything I knew from them. But I will give them another chance. As for Sonic Youth, it's kind of like my description for Modest Mouse's entry I put up there. My favorite songs other than the first two songs are "'Cross the Breeze" and "Eric's Trip," for the record. Beck's always been an acquired taste, really. I don't really remember Sea Change but remember not enjoying it anywhere near as much as the critics, and the new one seemed a bit too long (albeit amazingly produced).
I didn't like FOB at first, probably because I was tired of that style when I first heard them (regularly), but now I'd say that I genuinely enjoy them.
Your stand on jam bands is pretty much similar to mine. And I guess that's why I wasn't fond of Wilco's last album: It was a bit too jam-like for my taste.
I guess that while we're at it, here's some albums that fans can appreciate more than me:
The Beatles (The White Album)
Good, but some garbage towards the beginning I think stopped me from enjoying it as much.
Depeche Mode -- Music for the Masses
I just feel that DM has a lot more consistently good albums. I never really cared for "Little 15," "I Want You Now," or "To Have and to Hold." I don't know if the bonus tracks were too much for me, but not DM's best. I'd rank it about 9th or 10 in the group's albums. It actually does have great songs, so it's above A Broken Frame.
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Post by a Nick O! on Jan 9, 2007 0:34:15 GMT -4
I have the same problem with Paul's Boutique, actually. I don't think it's THAT good of an album, as everyone seems to think. I'd give that a 3.5/5, and I don't know if that's being generous. That's what I have down for my ranking of it, 4 years ago. My continual disappointment with Beastie Boys albums is that aside from their first and last albums, the ones in between are only about 2/3 rap songs. The rest are sometimes unnecessary bizarre and/or jammy interludes. I just don't see what everyone else sees in Pearl Jam, for the most part. My cousin burned me the ROIR Sessions and their Live in Amsterdam album. I know those aren't exactly the best representations, but you'd think those would give me a general idea. They're basically regarded as the innovators of the "metalcore" sound. As I'm sure you know, they're like a less ear-friendly Dillinger Escape Plan, pretty much. I think a lot of people out there fake liking them, just because they're "supposed to." I mean, why am I listening to something with no hooks, that's mostly just chaotic noise, whose singer's messages are completely lost in his 95% unintelligible scorched throat-full-of-sand vocal delivery? I've listened to Jane Doe enough to grade it (like Underoath, I listened to it 5-6 times with little confidence that I was actually ranking the songs properly, which means that it really didn't matter), and I have a burned copy of You Fail Me waiting. I don't understand why Daydream Nation is regarded as SY's best album. My brother said it took him a few good listens (as he says his favorite SY records always do), so maybe I was just being too hasty, especially since it wasn't immediate the first time around. I don't know how much I'd even like them if my bro hadn't gotten into them in the mid 90's. I probably wouldn't be familiar with my 2 favorites of theirs Washing Machine and Dirty, and if not for those, I'd probably just dismiss them as yet another indie band I "don't get." What's perplexing about Beck is that I love Mellow Gold and I love Odelay. And I'm a fan of his no-budget experimental trash record Stereopathetic Soulmanure, and the low-budget songs on One Foot in the Grave. Midnite Vultures and Guero weren't really all that great, and overall, I'm just too bored by Mutations and Sea Change. And in the store, The Information really didn't sound all that interesting. Even the radio singles, which I obviously know better. The thing about those emo bands I listed, is that they're all too wordy and imageless. And lyrically, they're too nerdily and intricately detailed (Death Cab for Cutie fits this as well) and try too hard to be clever. I did lump FOB in there, but then when they were taking off, I wanted to see what it was about them specifically that was getting them such recognition. I don't think their songs are really distinguishable enough on the whole. |
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Post by halo19 on Jan 20, 2007 20:56:32 GMT -4
Another one that I sort of forgot was the self-titled Deftones album. At first I thought the album was boring and re-hashing the territory, which was especially disappointing being the follow-up to White Pony. The songs themselves are actually pretty good. And I later decided that not pushing the envelope is not too bad.
Oh, another thing with MM's Moon & Antarctica album is that I think it would've been somewhat more effective if "The Cold Part/Alone Down There/The Stars Are Projectors" were put at the end, because that kind of weighs down the album a bit. That's the only downer of the entire album, IMO.
I recently got Beck's Mutations and I loved it. I wasn't at all bored by it. True, it's not crazy like his previous work, but just as creative and tuneful as ever. It didn't really start doing anything for me until I got to "Tropicalia." That hidden song kicks ass, too.
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Post by halo19 on Feb 24, 2008 5:10:30 GMT -4
Well, I now can say I am much more aware of Converge now and that I like them considerably more than from at first. Well, I think. I had disliked them initially via Jane Doe, but it was way easier for me getting into You Fail Me. I love that one. Eventually the riffs and such on that one seem more familiar and it gets better each time. I've liked it more each time I've given it a shot.
LOL and I love Paul's Boutique more in recent months for some reason, but I guess that since some moments didn't really do it for me I felt it may not all go for me.
The only Coltrane album I've heard is A Love Supreme and I thought it was amazing.
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